


Sunlight, Moonlight

by Tipsy_Kitty



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsy_Kitty/pseuds/Tipsy_Kitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen is an alpha soldier, disillusioned and homesick, fighting on the losing side of a battle for a colonial planet. Jared is an 18-year-old omega who recently lost his home and family, and now dances in a seedy after-hours nightclub/brothel. They meet and fall in love, but things don't always go according to plan amidst the devastation and chaos of war. A J2 retelling of <i>Miss Saigon</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2014 spn-j2-bigbang, my absolute favorite fandom event. Thank you wendy for keeping this wonderful challenge alive year after year. Massive thanks go to to necrora, who created the most beautiful, inspiring art despite the tight deadline, and to my betas daniomalley22 and firesign10, who offered wonderful suggestions and feedback in a very small window of time.

 

**I**

Jared stood quietly in the back hallway, watching as crowds of drunken soldiers filled the seedy after-hours club to capacity and beyond. The USS soldiers on leave greeted each other loudly, raucously, as if they were trying to convince themselves they were still alive. They slapped each other’s backs, high fived, cat-called the harried server-betas, and sloshed pitchers of ale and glasses of jewel-colored liquor on one another. The soldiers—mostly men with a handful of women, all alphas and all emitting alpha pheromones like crazy—postured and preened for one another, reminding Jared of the strutting cocks on the farm where he grew up.

“They should just start pissing on each other and be done with it,” said a voice just behind him, rousing Jared from his thoughts.

He laughed, a surprised snort, as he imagined the alphas marking their territory like animals. It was probably the first time he’d laughed in weeks; it felt good.

He turned to see Danneel gazing out at the crowd scornfully. When he gave her a timid smile, she rolled her eyes and spun on one perfect high heel, striding back to the dressing room to finish getting ready for the show.

Jared had been working at Club Isis for little more than a week, getting by filling drink orders and occasionally sucking off alphas in the back hallway. Sheppard, the club owner, had made it clear just that afternoon that Jared needed to start bringing in more money for his board. Apparently the paltry sum of _dylos_ he’d been earning was not enough. He was going to have to start letting the soldiers fuck him.

Jared turned away from the crowd packing the club and followed Danneel down the corridor to ready himself for tonight’s spectacle. The “Celebration of the Fertiles,” Sheppard had called it, marketing it to his customers as a beauty pageant. What a farce. Like everyone didn’t know Sheppard’s omegas were whores, like they didn’t know tonight’s ‘celebration’ was really just a raffle. Jared assumed Sheppard was getting desperate to drum up crowds. As Protectorate troops were being steadily withdrawn from Khonsu, the price of an under-the-table passport off-planet had soared in the past few weeks, and Sheppard was very vocal about his dream of resettling in Aten and opening a high-end strip club.

Jared was sure Sheppard _would_ make it off this lousy marble, too; he was shrewd as an alley cat and known for always landing on his feet no matter the odds. Jared was under no illusions that he’d be so lucky. He’d been born in the farmlands 100 km south of Khonsu, and had hoped to die there, old and fat and happy, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. When that dream had gone up in flames, his plans for the future had telescoped.

Live through today and tomorrow, for as many days as he could—that was his new dream.

Backstage, the other fertiles were laughing and talking loudly as they readied themselves for the night’s show, chattering about how many soldiers had shown up, about how tonight was the night they were going to snag a G.I. and sail through the stars to a better life. Jared listened with half an ear as he studied himself in the mirror, mortified to be wearing nothing but a pair of tiny, shiny silver shorts that barely covered his ass and left little to the imagination up front.

“Do alphas even want to see all this?” he asked helplessly, gesturing at the outline of his dick in the skin-tight pants.

“I know _I_ don’t,” Danneel sneered, and Jared sighed.

He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do to get ready. He was tall and skinny and pretty much the opposite of the other fertiles; all dainty female flesh and coy smiles, with their lush breasts where he had only the hard muscles he’d developed from working the family farm. Jared knew he had little-to-no hope of attracting the eye of one of the alpha soldiers out front.

“Don’t look so worried, Jared,” Sandy murmured, taking pity on him. “Here, let me help.” She outlined his eyes with her thick black kohl pencil, and then steered him towards Genevieve, who liberally dusted his naked torso with silver glitter.

“Tickles,” Jared protested, trying to push her away.

“You look lovely,” Genevieve smiled. “Now, go get ‘em.”

“Ha!” Danneel said from across the cramped dressing room, and Jared began worrying his lip with his teeth.

“Shut up, Danni,” Genevieve said without heat. “The boy’s nervous enough as it is.” She tapped Jared’s lips so he would stop biting them, and then added some of her clear gloss.

Jared felt immensely grateful that the others were willing to share their makeup with him. Such luxuries were not easy to come by these days. Jared himself had shown up at Isis with only one change of clothes, a handful of _ispony_ berries, and a photograph of his parents, happy and smiling in better times.

“You okay?” Sandy asked, and Jared nodded. In truth, he felt a strange combination of anxious and serene. He might be (mostly) a virgin, certainly never been knotted, but when it came down to it, Jared would rather sell himself to a hundred soldiers than be married off to a jerk like Pellegrino. At least this way he had some say, and a source of income that would keep him fed, keep a roof over his head during the approaching rainy season. He didn’t have to rely on anybody but himself, not as long as Sheppard was willing to keep him around.

And, well, it wasn’t like he’d been expecting anything different when he’d come to Sheppard begging for a job. Not like Jared had any more dreams of romance to be quashed. Maybe once, when he’d been a naïve boy, he’d imagined finding true love, an alpha to forge a life with, an alpha to help him raise a family of their own to love and cherish.

But then his parents had arranged for Jared to marry a wealthy man from a neighboring village, a cold-eyed alpha named Pellegrino, and Jared’s dreams of romance dissipated like fog in the early morning sun. Jared hadn’t been happy about the arrangement, but to be fair to his parents, they hadn’t been thrilled with the match either. It wasn’t really their fault. After years of war, their farmlands were devastated and the Padaleckis’ crop yields had dwindled to almost nothing. Jared’s family was teetering on the perilous edge between mere hunger and outright starvation.

Pellegrino had appeared like an answer to their prayers, and Jared had agreed to the marriage, reminding himself that surviving in a country that had been mired in civil war for over a decade was no place to harbor the romantic dreams of a child. It was decided that when Jared turned eighteen, the marriage ceremony would take place.

It should have been held last month.

“Wake up, Princess,” said Danneel with a light smack to the side of his face, bringing Jared out of his thoughts. “It’s almost show time.”

He grimaced at the nickname. Sheppard had given it to him his first night here and the other dancers thought it was hilarious.  Especially Danneel, who everyone knew ruled Isis and led Sheppard around by the nose because she was his biggest earner.

The other omegas in Sheppard’s stable talked trash about Jared because he was new, but they’d slowly been coming around to him. Danneel, though, was tough as tungsten and had taken an immediate dislike to him. Word had it she was not fond of fresh young omegas coming onto her turf.

“It makes her feel old,” Sandy had confided the day before as she played with Jared’s hair, teasing it into odd little sprigs that made her giggle.

“What is she, 25? That’s not old.”

“She’s 23, and if she heard you say that, you’d have claw marks all over your face.”

Jared had wisely shut up and kept out of Danni’s way after that.

“Come come, my little flock,” Sheppard said as he pushed his way into the dressing room, clapping his hands impatiently.  “Stop your primping and go land yourselves a soldier!”

The fertiles grumbled at him, and Sandy said, “Most of the soldiers have left Khonsu already.”

“Not all of them, we have a full house out there! Now get out there and shake your asses, make me some money!”

“Why don’t you shake _your_ ass, old man?” Danneel said.

“Well, it’s true there’s nothing I can’t sell,” Sheppard said as he smoothed down the front of his purple velour suit. “But it wouldn’t be fair to you lot if I put myself on the auction block. Who would pay for your skinny asses when all this is available?” he asked with a flourish of his hands.

They all groaned at him as they left the dressing room and headed back down towards the tiny stage in the main room.

As Jared mentally prepared himself to go onstage, to try attracting an alpha who might pay Sheppard for the pleasure of his company, he reminded himself that he’d been relatively lucky compared to the other omegas. They’d told stories that made his skin crawl. He’d never been forced to lay with another, never had to marry or mate Pellegrino, nor give it up to any of the alphas he’d encountered on the long, muddy road that led from his small village to the pulsing city of Khonsu.

And really, the soldiers that frequented the club didn’t seem so bad. Most of them didn’t look much older than Jared. He could see past the posturing to the frightened kids they were. Kids who had lost friends in combat, kids who were scared to die. They weren’t so different from Jared, not really.

Anyway what did it matter, in the end? They’d all probably be dead within the year—soldiers and whores alike.

 

* * *

 

Jensen had been on the ground for more than three years and still hadn’t managed to get used to the constant, suffocating, jungle humidity of this godforsaken planet. Entering Club Isis did nothing to cool him off. If anything, it was even worse inside; the intense heat and stench of too many sweaty G.I.s mingling with clouds of spicy smoke and grain alcohol, all laced with the beguiling, sweet scent of the fertiles who made their living dancing and selling themselves to the alpha soldiers.

Sheppard, the club’s sleazy owner and war profiteer extraordinaire, was staging some kind of bullshit pageant, most likely a last grab for cash so he could get out before the planet fell to the Resistance and the last of the Protectorate’s forces set off for the sky. Jensen thought it must be working; it seemed as though every damned soldier on ground was at the bar tonight.

“Ackles!” Kane called from across the room, and Jensen waved. He pushed his way through the rowdy crowd, and if the smiles he aimed at his fellow soldiers never quite reached his eyes, no one noticed or commented.

At the table closest to the shabby stage, Whitfield had a glass of ale waiting for him, which Jensen downed gratefully.

“What’s the word?” Jensen asked as Cassidy clapped him on the shoulder in greeting.

“Nothing good,” Kane snorted. “Did you hear General Williams just announced another ‘strategic retreat?’”

Jensen shook his head. His leave had started seven hours earlier and he’d spent most of the day crashed out in his apartment.

“This whole planet’s gonna be dust in less than a year.”  Kane waved at one of the beta bar-girls, and she brought over a pitcher of the stout citrus ale favored by the locals. “Forget about it, we’re our own alphas for the next three days, Ackles. Relax, have a drink.”

“Relax, right,” Jensen snorted. “Everyone in the ambassador’s office has been breathing down my neck for weeks, like I have anything to do with getting their families off-planet safely.”

The others nodded in glum commiseration. Kane worked with Jensen in the VIP flight pool, while Whitfield and Cassidy flew high-speed paragravity aircraft for the Med Corp. They all knew too well how any soldier perceived as having one foot off-planet was hounded, begged, propositioned, and guilted constantly to help the increasingly desperate civilians find passage into space.

Everybody knew the war was over—everybody on the ground, at least. The ranks of the Resistance had swollen as the tide had turned, and Khonsu, Amun’s capital city, was an increasingly dangerous place to live. Some days Jensen didn’t know how much longer he could stomach fighting this pointless, bloody war, and other days he could hardly imagine returning home and becoming a civilian himself. Finding a civvy career, getting married, starting a family...  it seemed more alien to him than some of the more toxic and inhospitable planets he’d visited during his tours. Not that it mattered much. The odds that he’d actually make it back to Aten alive and unharmed seemed less and less likely every day this blasted war dragged on.

But that all felt far away within the walls of the Club Isis, and Jensen tried to put it out of his mind. Nothing he could do about it, and all the gods of the 33 solar systems knew he needed a night off to unwind. He just wasn’t sure he could handle another sweaty night in another whorehouse masquerading as a bar.

When Cassidy passed him a smoldering _esuyp_ roll, he took it gratefully and drew the thick, sweet smoke into his lungs. He shook himself mentally. He was a soldier, for fuck’s sake, not a damned philosopher.

“Feeling better?” Whitfield asked as he snaked the joint, and Jensen grinned at him.

“Oh yeah, Sarge is feeling no pain,” Kane said.  “I got that off the sweetest little fertile down in the Sharuna district. Christ, what an ass.” He puckered his lips and smacked them together loudly. Jensen and Cassidy looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and then both doubled over laughing.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kane grinned. “Your jealousy is ugly to behold, my friends.”

Music began to play, shimmery notes from one of the indigenous flutes that always made Jensen relax deep inside his bones, and he took another large swallow of his drink. He leaned back in his chair and watched as the dancers rubbed against the soldiers in a sordid display.

“Gonna let us buy you some tail for the night?” Kane asked him with a leer, and Jensen shook his head firmly.

Once, Jensen would have enjoyed the spectacle, the booze, and ultimately, the pleasure of spending an evening knotted to one of the pretty little fertiles, but he’d lost his taste for whores months ago. Their desperation to land a soldier and escape this rock was either pitiable or aggravating, depending on his mood, and left him hating himself just a tiny bit more each time it happened. It was better, easier, to take care of himself with the quick, efficient strokes of his own right hand. He’d been doing it since he was 13, after all. No guilt, no strings, no repercussions.

“Why don’t you just get the next pitcher and quit worrying so damned much about my sex life?” Jensen countered with an elbow to Kane’s ribs. “Worry ’bout your own dick, it’s gonna fall off if you don’t...” he trailed off mid-insult as he caught sight of one of the dancers—a male fertile, a rarity on this planet. He was tall and thin and nervous, eyes tracking the crowd uneasily as he tried to make himself disappear into the reedy curtains that led to the private rooms above the club.

He looked impossibly young and out of place even though he was wearing tight, revealing clothes like the other bar-whores, his eyes rimmed with kohl and his chest dusted with glitter that caught the lights above and made him seem to shimmer.

Jensen blinked. “Who is that?” he asked, ignoring Cassidy’s smirk and Whitfield’s eyeroll.

“That?” Kane said. “Is your date for this evening.”

Jensen smacked him in the chest but it was an indifferent reflex, almost an afterthought. All his resolutions and proclamations had flown out the window with one look at the new omega, and his friends knew it.

Jensen very much wanted to spend the evening knotted to Sheppard’s new boy.

The ‘contestants’ lined up on the tiny stage and started shimmying around and showing off their assets as the music grew in intensity. The tall boy hung back, uneasy, looking like he was ready to bolt at any moment. He swayed unevenly, to jeers and catcalls, until one of the dancers grabbed him by the chin and turned his head so he was looking at her, not the boisterous soldiers. He smiled at her and as they danced, his shyness seemed to melt away, his wooden, nervous shifting replaced by an untrained but sinuous, graceful dance that caused Jensen’s breath to catch in his throat. At the other dancer’s urging, his long arms slid down his body until his hands were gripping his ankles; his long legs taut and his head almost gracing the dirty barroom floor. The tiny, shiny hot pants perfectly displayed his buttocks. The crowd’s jeers turned to applause, but Jensen barely noticed.

His mouth literally watered.

As the dance—if the writhing that the whores were doing could be called dancing—wound down, Sheppard oozed onto the stage again and asked the audience to help him declare a winner. Jensen cheered loudly for the boy, who looked surprised and squinted into the crowd to see who his admirer might be. As the soldiers whooped and applauded, a lithe and limber redhead named Danneel was given the sash and tiara, to the thunderous approval of the crowd.

Jensen saw and heard none of it, eyes trained on the tall male fertile clinging to the shadows. Even when Cassidy jumped to her feet whooping because she’d ‘won’ Danneel for the night, Jensen could not look away from the beautiful boy.

“You have all the damn luck,” Whitfield groused, as Kane offered Cassidy a quarter-kilo of the sticky _esuyp_ herb if Cassidy would let him watch.

“C’mon, just for a little bit?”

“Fuck y’all,” Cassidy said with a cheerful wink over her shoulder. “Don’t wait up, boys.”

Jensen barely noticed her exit, too busy scanning the packed dance floor. He felt a stab of disappointment when he saw Sheppard leading the omega— _his_ omega—through the curtains.

“Gods,” Jensen swore crossly as he drained the rest of his ale.  Maybe it was time to call it a night, even though it was just past two, and Jensen didn’t relish the thought of returning alone to his own small, humid quarters to brood.

“Happy nameday, Sarge.” Kane was pushing into his space and thrusting something in his hand. Jensen hadn’t even seen him leave the table; so much for his military training.

“My nameday’s in January,” Jensen pointed out.

Kane handed him a room key. “Lucky number 3,” he said with a wink, and then he was off to secure his own entertainment for the night.

“Kane! Wait!” Jensen called after him. Gods, he thought he’d made himself clear. Well, he’d just have to go tell Sheppard’s whore to make her evening’s take in someone else’s arms. He left the crowded dance floor, grateful to be away from the crush of sweaty alphas and grasping bar betas and omegas. At least in the back hall he felt like he could breathe again.

“Ah, good evening Sergeant Ackles,” Sheppard said, his voice dripping with false good humor. Jensen had never liked the obsequious club owner, and he felt his body inching closer to the lurid purple walls in an effort to avoid contact.

“I hear you’re quite taken with my new Princess.” He gripped Jensen by the elbow and steered him towards the room at the end of the hall.

“I actually hadn’t intended—” Jensen started to say, but then Sheppard was opening the door and Jensen’s breath caught as he saw the beautiful boy from the floor show, smiling at him uncertainly.

“Wait, no—” Jensen tried again.

“What, you don’t want him?” Sheppard asked.

“No, I do, I just—”

Sheppard rolled his eyes. “He’s yours for the night, Ackles. But if you’re not interested, I can find someone else pretty easily to take your place.” He turned to the boy with a hard look. “And if I can’t, pretty Princess, you’re out on your ass. You’ve been here for five days already and you’ve barely brought in enough to cover keeping a roof over your head.”

The boy had been watching all this time, eyes flicking between Sheppard and Jensen, and at the pimp’s speech he turned pleading eyes to Jensen.

“I’ll make it good,” he said, his voice soft and husky. “Please, stay.”

“How old are you?” Jensen asked.

“Old enough!” Sheppard and the boy said at the same time.

“What’s your name?” Jensen asked.

“Jared. My name is Jared.”

“I’m Jensen.”

“Right. Well. Have fun, lads,” Sheppard said as he backed out the door. Probably off to count his money, Jensen thought uncharitably. When he was gone, Jensen turned back to the young omega, to Jared, and smiled tentatively.

“I enjoyed watching you dance,” Jensen said.

Jared raised one eyebrow. “I thought pilots had to have perfect vision.”

Jensen blinked in surprise and then started laughing, relieved when Jared joined in.

As their laughter trailed off, Jared said, “I haven’t been dancing for long.” He looked shy again, peering at Jensen through his messy hair. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“Look, we don’t have to...” Jensen started to say.

“No! Please, I’ll make it good for you, so good.” His eyes met Jensen’s and he seemed to take a deep, steadying breath before continuing. “I have, I have the tightest ass in Upper Khonsu,” he said. “I’ll show you, let me make you feel good. I want...I need your cock, alpha, please.”

Jensen felt his heart harden. Just another whore after all.

“I don’t think I’m interested,” Jensen said. “But I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

“Oh.” Jared lowered his eyes to the floor, but not before Jensen saw the look of humiliation flash across his face. “If you’d rather, one of the girls? I know they’re much better at this than I am.”

The boy was trembling, and Jensen started to think maybe he’d misread the situation. “You haven’t done this before, have you?”

Jared raised misery-filled eyes to meet Jensen’s gaze, and he shook his head. “No,” whispered.

“It’s okay,” Jensen said gently. “But, you really shouldn’t be here. You’re just a kid. Maybe you can still find a different job.”

Jared’s eyes flashed angrily for just a second, and then his expression smoothed out again, the placid smile Jensen had seen on dozens of prostitutes. “Of course,” he said, bowing slightly. “I’ll just show you out.”

Jensen was surprised; he’d expected Jared to try convincing him to stay. Before he knew what had happened, Jared had escorted him back through the maze of hallways and out onto the main floor.

“Wait,” he said uncertainly, but Jared was already gone, melted back into the crowd.

 _Well done, Ackles_ , he thought glumly as he ordered one last citrus ale for the night.

On the dance floor, bodies pressed tight together as the sounds of the flutes became augmented with steady, pulsing drum beats. In the corner, Sheppard watched the crowd dance and sway, his eyes glinting with greed. Jensen looked away, wondering if he should have stayed with Jared, then cursed his own lust for muddying his thoughts. He had no business being with that kid, nobody did.

When he looked up again, he saw Jared being led roughly towards the back hall by a man who towered over Jared, a career officer named Baldwin. He was known for treating the Amun civilians he’d sworn to protect with indifferent callousness, sometimes even cruelty.

“Split that little omega right open,” Jensen remembered him saying one night when they were playing cards. “Gods, did she scream.”

“Oh, hell no,” Jensen muttered, stalking across the packed floor to intercept Baldwin and Jared before they could disappear into the back.

“You want something, Ackles? Maybe a double knotting?” Baldwin asked archly when he’d planted himself in front of them. His eyes flicked up and down Jensen’s body and he grinned. “I’m game.”

“Jared’s paid for tonight, he’s off the table,” Jensen said firmly.

“Not what I heard.”

“You heard wrong. Clear out.”

And then Sheppard was there, negotiating an additional fee for Jensen and smoothly escorting Baldwin away.

“He’s bad news,” Jensen said as he steered Jared back towards his room.

“You don’t have to protect me, Jensen. I have a job to do.”

“Yeah, well, tonight _I’m_ your job.”

Jared eyed him dubiously, like Jensen was going to bolt again, but Jensen had already made up his mind. If Jared was going to lose his virginity in this shithole, Jensen could at least make it good for him.

“Let’s just...” Jensen sighed, ran a hand through his hair so it stood up in crazy, sweaty spikes. “Let’s just make each other feel good tonight.”

Jensen wrapped his arms around Jared’s lean waist and nuzzled at the long stretch of his neck. Jared’s skin was cool and soft and smelled of orange blossoms, reminded him of home.

“Yeah,” Jared said. “Yeah, that sounds...that sounds nice.”

And when they kissed, Jensen thought the boy tasted of oranges too.


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

 

Jensen sat at the window watching the stars, the lights of Khonsu that never seemed to dim even though dawn was not far off. The three sister moons hung low, the light they cast upon the land eerie and cold.

In the small, rusted bed behind him, Jared sighed and rolled over in his sleep and Jensen turned away from the window. He watched the gentle rise and fall of Jared’s chest, where a few stray bits of glitter still clung. He looked down at himself and tried to brush off some of the silver dust that had been transferred to his own sweat-soaked body during their coupling.

Jared looked impossibly young in sleep, though he assured Jensen that his 18th nameday had been several weeks earlier.

It was foolish, he knew, to worry about Jared’s youth. Jensen himself had been seeking pleasure with others since his sixteenth year, but...

But he had a younger sister back on Aten who was only slightly older than Jared, and the thought of Makia with no family, no other options but to sell herself, made him queasy. Made him feel dirty.

He had accomplished what he set out to at any rate; Jared was no longer a virgin, and though Jensen couldn’t hope to protect him from all the Lt. Col. Baldwins out there, he’d done his best for one night. What more could one soldier do in the midst of this crumbling city, this dying planet?

He pushed away from the window and went to retrieve his scattered clothes, trying to smother the giddy memories of their night together as though he were throwing ash on a campfire. He was not successful.

_“C’mon, alpha,” Jared had said, hands grasping for the zipper of Jensen’s lightweight trousers. “Show me what you got, I know you want—” but Jensen had cut him off with a gentle kiss._

_“Just be you,” Jensen had murmured against Jared’s lips. “I don’t need that other stuff.”_

_Jared had looked embarrassed, the cutest flush on his cheeks, and Jensen kissed him again. “Let’s just be real.”_

_“Yes, okay,” Jared had said. His hands twined around Jensen’s back, unmindful of the way Jensen’s white undershirt clung to him in damp patches._

_He marveled at how Jared’s body felt cool to the touch, like he wasn’t at all affected by the stifling heat, and Jensen ached with desire to heat up Jared’s blood, make him sweat and moan and cry out._

_Jensen bowed his head to suck one of Jared’s nipples into his mouth, his hands kneading Jared’s ass through the satiny shorts that barely covered him. When Jared ran one of his coltish legs up Jensen’s calf, Jensen picked him up and Jared wrapped his legs around Jensen’s waist, the sweet sounds he made turning Jensen weak with lust._

_They fell to the bed, and Jensen was pleased at the way Jared’s body responded to his touch, to his kisses. A whore could fake many things, but genuine arousal was not often one of them. When he peeled the shorts from Jared’s body, Jared’s cock was hard, flush against his flat belly, and his hole was slicking up beneath Jensen’s talented fingers. Jensen kissed him breathless while he gently worked Jared open, until Jared was making desperate little noises in the back of his throat._

_“Please, alpha, please,” Jared gasped, and this time the word ‘alpha’ on his tongue sounded genuine, needy, and it amped up Jensen’s own desires. Perversely, the more desperate he became to fill Jared as deep as possible—to knot him until they were both senseless—the slower he moved, wanting to draw out their pleasure for as long as possible. As his touches became more delicate, Jared writhed and begged for him until Jensen could resist no longer._

_He stretched out on his back and guided Jared down onto his cock, gentle hands helping Jared find his rhythm and set the pace, and he watched, rapt, as Jared rode him until they were both panting, hair damp with sweat that had nothing to do with the sultry evening. When he felt his knot growing, felt his body coiled tight in anticipation of release, he ran gentle fingers down Jared’s stomach, over the groove of his hipbones, and then tugged lightly at Jared’s balls. The omega threw back his head, body stuttering, and with a strangled cry he was coming. Jensen rocked up into Jared’s body faster now, arms wrapped tight around Jared’s spent body until they were locked together, and his body arched as he came with a low moan._

_After, there were soft kisses, gentle caresses that slowly mapped out each other’s bodies, until finally the god of sleep pulled them under._

If he were back home, he knew that one night with Jared would never be enough, but Aten was a galaxy away. Jensen had to be realistic. He was a soldier and Jared was a whore, and there was no sense pretending last night had been anything more than a business transaction.

He laced up his boots and tiptoed towards the door, pausing to leave a stack of folded bills on the nightstand next to the pitcher of tepid water. Jared mumbled something into his pillow, and then sighed and relaxed again. Jensen eased the door open gently so Jared would not awaken further. He couldn’t face the young omega, who had looked at him with something like adoration in his eyes as they lay nose to nose, their bodies tied together.

The hallway outside Jared’s room was quiet; apparently even Sheppard had to sleep sometimes. As Jensen exited through the backdoor, he felt an ache in his heart that he only allowed to creep in during the darkest hour of the night. Homesick for Aten and his family, for a sky with only one moon and a sun that burned less fiercely. Heartsick for the soldiers who had died on this rock, fighting for an ideology that only the most learned politicians could articulate.

Well. Ideology plus large stores of the extremely valuable illyrium that helped keep both the Unified Stellar Systems and Union of Sovereign Systems Republic ships powering through space in their efforts to colonize the largest number of planets. What the powers that be thought this race would win them, Jensen couldn’t say. He’d had one semester of university under his belt before the fight for the soul of Amun had turned from a minor military conflict into full-scale war. He’d joined the USS Protectorate Air Corp, with the promise that his schooling would be paid for when he left the service.

At the time it had seemed both a noble and sensible career move. Now it made him feel like a mercenary.

Outside, the sun was just peeking over the northern horizon, and the streets were quieter than usual. Sex workers and drunk soldiers were making their way home while the first street merchants set up their carts for another day of business.

Jensen bought a bag of sugary fried dough that reminded him of the beignets his dad made back home, and sat down on a park bench to eat and watch the city awaken from its nap. The flower market opened its shutters and Jensen breathed deep the scent of the blooms, knowing that before too long their bouquet would be overpowered by the fish stalls and worse.

He thought of Jared back in his stuffy little room, wondered if Jared would be sad to wake up alone, or angry, or just relieved. He felt a pull in his chest to return to him, but he ignored it. He had nothing to offer Jared, he was barely staying sane himself. And if the rumors were true, he’d be pulled from Amun before three months had passed on the universal calendar.

A shadow crossed Jensen’s face, caught under the neon glow of an after-after-hours club, and he looked up to see a beta around 12 years of age standing in front of his bench. His long hair was matted and tangled, his clothes stained, and his left arm ended in a knit cap just below the shoulder.

“Hello,” Jensen said, reaching into his pocket for a _dylos_ to give the boy.

“Song for a piece of your bread, soldier?” the boy asked.

Jensen handed him the entire sack. “You don’t have to sing for me, I don’t mind sharing.”

The boy eyed him suspiciously and looked into the paper sack as though it might contain river snakes. When he saw that it was just fried dough, his eyes lit up.

“Thank you, soldier.”

“How did you lose your arm, if you don’t mind my asking?” Jensen asked.

He gestured with his head to one of the burned-out sky towers a few blocks away. “My family lived there,” he mumbled as he secured the sack under his missing arm and reached inside with his good hand.

“Where do you live now?” Jensen asked, though it was evident the boy was homeless. Most likely the rest of his family had been killed in the explosion two months ago that was meant to level the embassy but had instead blown up a residential block. Maybe he had a sibling or two to look after, but he did not look as though any adult were keeping watch over him.

“Thanks,” the kid said again through a mouthful of bread, ignoring Jensen’s question, and then he was sprinting away through the dark streets.

Jensen wondered how long it would be before the boy was offering to sell more than a song for a bite of food. He didn’t really want to know the answer.

He stood up and returned to the cart for a new bag of bread and two small cups of the strong black _baya_ brew, not quite coffee and not quite tea, that was cultivated from the tough seeds of the baya trees that grew in the forests west of Khonsu.

He left the waking market, walking back in the direction he’d come, back to Club Isis.

* * *

 “Hey,” Jared said softly when Jensen re-entered his room. “Thought you were gone.”

“Just went to pick us up some breakfast,” Jensen lied. Jared gave him a look like he could see right through Jensen’s bullshit, but then he shrugged.

“Breakfast sounds good, thanks. Let’s eat it upstairs.” He started to move from the bed, then spotted the pile of _dylos_ on the bedside table and froze.

“I don’t need your money, Jensen.”

“You kinda do. Please, take it.”

Jared’s face shut down and he drew his knees up to his chest. “Keep it.”

“No, it’s yours. You earned it.”

Jared snorted softly. “You already paid Sheppard. Don’t do me any favors.” He stood and pulled on a pair of silky blue pants to cover his nudity. The blush had returned to his face, but this time it didn’t make Jensen smile, it made him feel small and cold and cruel.

“Really, Jensen, it’s okay.” He gave Jensen a watery smile. “I probably wasn’t even that good, since it was my first time.”

“You were amazing, Jared.”

Jared turned away, picked up one of the cups and took a tentative sip. “I’m serious,” he said, finally meeting Jensen’s eyes. “You don’t owe me anything else. Last night was nice and...and I’m glad it was you. I’m glad my first time was with you.”

“I’m glad too.”

“But I’m a whore, Jensen. Maybe I’ve only been a whore for a week, but...”

“Don’t call yourself that.” Jensen sat down heavily on the rumpled bed, where they had so recently been joined in ecstasy. “But...why _are_ you here, Jared?”

Jared snorted. “Why is anybody? Does it matter? Do I really have to tell you all the details about how I heard my parents die, how my village was overrun by the Amun Resistance?”

“No,” Jensen said quietly. “Not unless you want to.” He stood and moved towards Jared then, touched his shoulder lightly. “What if I want to see you again? Tonight?” he asked.

Jared’s laugh held no mirth. “Well, you know where to find me. I’ll be here at the club, selling my ‘charms’.”

“No, no you won’t. Please, come with me, stay with me.”

Jared raised a suspicious eyebrow. “I’m not a charity case, Jensen. I can take care of myself.”

“Okay, but...” Jensen sighed. “Look, it’s not just ... You make me feel good Jared, not just physically. You make me...feel. Please? Come stay with me?”

“Sheppard—”

“I’ll take care of Sheppard.” Jensen stepped closer, folding Jared into his arms. “Unless you don’t want to come with me? It’s a small apartment, not much to look at, but at least I’m not in the barracks anymore, not since I started flying for the embassy.”

Jared sighed. “C’mon, let’s go eat.”

They climbed up onto the roof together, and nibbled on their dough while the sun rose above the land, turning the moons into ghosts with its light.

When their hunger was sated, Jared spread out the blankets he’d brought with him, and they began kissing again, not gentle this time but hot, insistent. Jared pulled Jensen down with him and Jensen covered Jared’s thin frame with his own, tongue playing with the delicate folds of Jared’s ear while Jared shuddered and bucked beneath him.

“Want you Jensen, please,” Jared gasped, raking his fingers across Jensen’s back, fighting to pull Jensen’s shirt over his head.

“Please come stay with me, Jared,” Jensen whispered into his ear. “Want to be with you all the time.”

“Yeah,” Jared moaned. “Yes. Want to be with you too. Wherever you are.”

“God, you feel so good, taste so good.” Jensen let go of Jared long enough to strip out of pants before getting his mouth on Jared’s flesh again. He sucked at Jared’s collarbone, relishing the feel of Jared arching into him, the needy little gasps Jared made as his body molded to Jensen’s.

“Please,” Jared said, demanded, and Jensen could hold back no longer. He parted Jared’s legs and then he was sliding into Jared’s slick warmth with a gasp.

It was desperate, frenzied, with none of the gentleness of the night before. Jensen’s hips slammed into Jared and soon, too soon, he was coming in Jared’s tight warm body, Jared crying out as he followed seconds later, spilling his hot seed between them.

When they were knotted, Jensen continued shifting his hips rhythmically, trying to wrench another orgasm from Jared, and when he succeeded, Jared’s entire body was lax, head lolling to the side, only the gentle squeeze of his hand in Jensen’s to let him know Jared hadn’t passed out.

“Wherever you are,” Jared mumbled, and then sleep was claiming him again.

The sun was higher now, casting everything in a golden glow. Jensen turned them so he was on his back, Jared asleep on his chest, the point of his nose buried in the crook of Jensen’s neck.

“Wherever you are,” Jensen promised as his hands roamed over Jared’s back, through the damp curls of his rich brown hair. “Wherever you are.”


	3. Chapter 3

 

 **III**  
Aten, 1078 A. N.  
(Three years later)

 

In all Jensen’s years in the Protectorate’s Air Corp, he’d never gotten used to how strange the night sky looked from the surface of distant planets. As he sat on the glider in his backyard, staring up at the constellations that made up the Aten sky, he thought that the stars of his homeworld seemed more alien than any he’d encountered during his various deployments.

He tried to remember the constellations as he’d memorized them when he was just a child, when he’d only dreamed of whizzing through space and fighting for the USS. He’d been able to name dozens, to irritate his family with stories about the heroes and goddesses that surrounded them each night, forever acting out their histories in pinpoints of light. He’d even learned the star stories from the First Earth, before the sun had burned up the sky and the colonization of distant planets had begun.

Now, all he saw as he gazed upon the night sky of Aten was Jared. Jared that first night in a sleazy room in Club Isis, when he’d been determined to make Jensen feel good, to make them both forget about the war.

Jared in the glow of the three sister moons that hung low above Khonsu, how the light had made his skin incandescent.

Jared’s look of surprise when Jensen had touched and teased and licked him all over, told him how perfect he was, gave Jared pleasures he’d obviously never expected to feel.

Jared crying out his name as his first orgasm ripped through him, Jared milking his knot as Jensen slowly  rocked into Jared’s body.

Jared the last time they’d held each other, standing under the stars in the crowded streets of Khonsu. Jensen had kissed him long and deep, and now years later he wondered if his subconscious knew something he hadn’t, if part of him knew it was a good-bye kiss.

He had promised to return in a couple of hours with the paperwork necessary to bring Jared home with him, not realizing that the embassy was in chaos and the military evacuation already underway even as they embraced.

Stupid. He’d been so stupid, so sure that everything would fall into place, that Jared would sail home with him, that his family would accept the war orphan with open arms. That they’d rebuild their lives on Aten.

Jensen had kissed him good-bye, thrust the dagger he always kept strapped to his thigh into Jared’s hands just in case, and then left Jared standing alone in the street.

And he’d never seen his sweet, gentle fertile again.

He wished he’d left a better, fiercer weapon for Jared to protect himself with. In his nightmares he saw Jared shot, raped, hanged, burned, dying, always dying with Jensen’s useless dagger in his hands.

There was only one large moon lighting the night sky of Aten, but sometimes if Jensen squinted just right his vision would blur, split into two or three moons, and he could pretend he was standing under the sky with Jared once more.

Maybe in another life, Jensen thought, reaching for the bottle of bourbon at his feet. He lifted it to his lips, surprised to find that he’d already drained it. He set it down, knocked it over with his foot and listened as it fell onto the grass with a thud, empty.

“Hey,” said a quiet voice behind him, and a hand rested lightly on his shoulder. “Bad dreams again?”

“Sorry, babe, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Jensen said, evading the question.

“It’s nothing.” Chase settled down next to him. “What are husbands for?”

Jensen kissed Chase on the temple and drew him into his arms. “What would I do without you?”

They sat quietly, watching the sky. When one of the stars seemed to break free from the black velvet void, Chase asked, “Falling star?”

Jensen watched as the brilliant heavenly body zipped through the sky and shook his head. “I think it’s a USS passenger ship.”

Chase settled into Jensen’s arms, quiet as he always was when Jensen was trapped in his head, back on Amun.

Jensen knew that Chase loved him wholly and completely, and feared losing him enough that he never mentioned how often Jensen woke up screaming from nightmares. He had questions, Jensen knew he must have dozens, but he never pressed for answers.

Chase seemed uneasy for a few minutes, as though he were wrestling with his thoughts, and under the inky night sky he finally said, “Chris called earlier, while you were sleeping. Said he needs to talk with us.”

“Kane?” Jensen asked, surprised. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“He...” Chase cleared his throat, trying to dispel the formless dread Sergeant Kane’s call had left him with. “He said he had some news for us, and hoped we could attend his fundraiser next week. It’s in Akoris.”

“Huh.” Jensen slumped further onto the glider, drew Chase into his arms.  Akoris was only 90 km away,  no more than a 20-minute trip if the traffic was in their favor. “Sure, why not?”

“Why not,” Chase echoed hollowly.

Jensen stood unsteadily, shaking off the last of his nightmare about Jared. He grasped Chase’s hand in his. “Let’s go to bed?” he asked, and Chase smiled at him, tentative and wary but so real, so alive.

Chase loved Jensen, he knew this, knew he loved Chase too. Without Chase, he would have probably ridden his skycycle into the side of a mountain by now, seeking release from the war crimes he’d seen, from the civilians he’d failed to help, from his memories of Jared.

So he led Chase back into the house, and they made love as the crickets cried and gnashed their wings together outside the bedroom of their modest home. And if Chase felt the tears that soaked his back as they lay knotted together under the waning moon, he said nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

**IIII**  
Amun, 1075 A.N.

 

Jensen watched with amusement as his small apartment was filled with a delegation of fertiles from Isis. They mingled easily with Jensen’s friends; Cassidy was making eyes at Danneel, the omega she’d won the other night at the pageant, while Whitfield watched over everything with the eyes of an anthropologist, which he’d said many times he planned to study once he’d done his time in the Air Corp. The dancers were chanting a blessing and waving dried _ravidery_ fronds about, singing something in their native tongue that he couldn’t quite decipher. Watching over the gathering was a photo pinned to the wall of a kindly looking couple, betas, who could only be Jared’s parents. They smiled down on everyone, frozen for eternity in a happier time, a happier place.

“Do you think he’ll have a vidscreen in every room?” Sandy asked wistfully.

“And closets full of clothes!” Genevieve added. “And he won’t have to dance anymore, he won’t have to—”

“Hush, Genevieve,” Danneel said, pinching her arm, and Genevieve broke off, embarrassed. Not that it was a secret to anybody in Jensen’s small studio apartment that the omegas were prostitutes, but Jensen didn’t need the reminder that only a week before, Jared had been taking care of alphas with rushed blowjobs in the back of the club.

The girls went back to their ritual, Genevieve still blushing and murmuring apologies.

“What is all this?” Jensen asked.

“They‘re blessing the space.”

“What are they singing?”

“They’re asking my parents to watch us from the sky,” Jared translated for Jensen.

“It’s lovely.”

“It’s a wedding song,” Jared admitted with some embarrassment. “Sorry. They didn’t know what else to sing.”

Jensen blinked, and then his hand was grasping for Jared’s. “It’s perfect; it’s like a promise. I can’t wait to marry you, Jared.”

It was Jared’s turn to cast a surprised look at Jensen. “You don’t have to say that, Jensen. I know I’m lucky enough that you’re willing to take me off this planet before it’s incinerated.”

“Shh. You know this is much more than that, _we_ are so much more than that. The first thing I’m going to do when we get back to Aten is drag you to the courthouse and make us official. ”

Jared wrinkled his nose. “Won’t we be suspended for two weeks during the journey? You do what you want, the first thing I’m going to do when we land is take a long, hot shower.”

Jensen laughed. “You only love me for my running water.”

“It is quite a selling point,” Jared teased, and then Jensen turned to Jared, cupped his smooth cheek in Jensen’s calloused hand and pressed him into the wall, kissing him insistently, one hand in his hair and the other inching down towards his cock, already standing prominently against the pale silk trousers Jared was wearing. Jared gasped and tilted his head, shivering when Jensen nibbled at the sensitive flesh on his collarbone, the juncture of his neck...

“All right, you two, time for that later,” Kane said as he popped open a jug of citrus ale and began dividing it out.

“To Jared,” said Danneel, who was smiling at him with none of her usual hostility.

“To Jensen,” Cassidy grinned.

“To Jared and Jensen!” everyone said, raising their glasses to the toast.

Nobody paid any attention to the sound of the front door swinging open, until a voice hissed, “Whore!”

Everyone froze. Jensen turned to see a strange alpha, tall and lean, with blond hair and ice chips for eyes. He looked murderous, and Jensen instinctively stepped in front of Jared.

“Pellegrino,” Jared said, his voice cold. “You’re not welcome here.”

“Not welcome! You’re mine, Jared, or did you forget the pledge we took to be wed?” Pellegrino’s eyes burned with anger as he looked between Jensen and Jared.

“I didn’t forget,” Jared said. “I chose to ignore it.”

“Who are you?” Jensen asked, with confusion.

“Shut up, soldier,” Pellegrino said. “Jared is mine, and you’ll pay for touching him.”

“I’m not yours!” Jared snapped. “I only agreed to wed you so my parents could keep their farm.” He turned to Jensen. “My parents are gone, Jensen, and as far as I’m concerned my marriage pledge is just as dead as they are.”

“Breaking your parents’ vow is unforgivable, Jared.” He looked around the room and snorted. “Whores. Whores and traitors and enemy soldiers, Jared, it’s clear that I’ve found you just in time!”

“All right, I don’t care who you are,” Jensen said angrily. “Get the fuck out of my apartment! Jared’s already told you that you’re not welcome here.”

There were too many people in the small room for him to safely pull out his laser-rifle, but he unsheathed the dagger he kept strapped to his thigh and held it to Pellegrino’s cheek, just barely scratching the flesh. “You. Are. Not. Welcome. Get out of here!”

Pellegrino flinched at the cold steel, his own hand reaching for his gun, but the look on Jensen’s face must have convinced him it wasn’t a fight he could win without losing an eye.

“You’ll be dead soon, soldier, dead or gone, and Jared will be with me. He _belongs_ to me.”

“I’d rather die than marry you!” Jared snapped.

“We’ll see about that, dear husband.” He backed away from the knife, then turned and swept from the room, and everybody looked at each other awkwardly.

“What a charming alpha,” Danneel finally said. “I can’t believe he’s still available.”

The other fertiles laughed uneasily. They congratulated the couple one last time before leaving for the club to begin their shift, and the soldiers followed, an unofficial guard. When they were alone, Jared sagged onto the bed and put his head in his hands.

“I can’t believe he found me,” Jared said. “I can’t believe he thought I would just follow him home like an abandoned puppy.”

“How dangerous is he?” Jensen asked, moving to the window to watch Pellegrino stalk down the crowded street, his black cape billowing behind him.

“He’s... yeah, he’s dangerous.” Jared ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stand up crazily. “He doesn’t even want me, not really. He’s like a spoiled little boy who wants what he can’t have.”

“He seems to take this, what was it? Marriage pledge?”

Jared nodded wordlessly.

“He seems to take it pretty seriously. Is it enforceable?”

“No, of course not. It was just a verbal agreement between my parents and him.”

Jared started to shake then as the adrenaline he’d felt while facing down Pellegrino drained from his body.

“He...he didn’t kill my family, but he might as well have. The week before my village was massacred, he showed up dressed all in black, told us we were on the losing side and if we were smart we’d join the Resistance.”

Jensen laced his fingers in Jared’s, listening.

“My parents didn’t care who was in charge, they just wanted to be safe, to keep me safe. They just wanted to be free to live their lives.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly, I was trying to bring in the cows and suddenly there was all this shooting, all these screams, and it just went on and on. I hid, stayed out in the pasture till it was quiet. And when I made it back to town, everybody was dead. Hacked up or shot, all the fields on fire...there was a sign nailed to the door of the temple, it said ‘TRAITORS.’ I guess because we were known for giving food and shelter to the Protectorate forces when they passed by.”

He started crying then, and Jensen held him and soothed him, laid them down and murmured nonsense until Jared fell into an uneasy sleep.

At dawn Jared awoke him by trailing kisses down Jensen’s chest, and they comforted each other with their bodies until they were sweaty and spent, too sated to be troubled by grief or worry anymore that day.

* * *

“Jensen Ross Ackles!” Each word was punctuated by Chris pounding forcefully on his door, and Jensen groaned, rolled over and into Jared’s arms.

“Make it stop,” Jensen mumbled, and Jared laughed softly.

“I thought you soldiers types were up with the cocks. It’s after noon.”

“I’m up with your cock. Wearing me out for anything else.”

“I thought it was my ass you were interested in. Also, Ross?” Jared teased, and Jensen buried his face in his arms.

“Jensen!”Chris shouted from the other side of the door. “You’re about to be AWOL, you ass!”

Jensen sighed and struggled out of bed, made his way blearily to the door.

“What the fuck, Chris?” he asked as he opened the door a crack. “What are you doing here?” Kane shoved past him and into the apartment, heading straight to the stove to brew up a pot of _baya_. “And why didn’t you just call my com?”

“Signals are jammed, most of our com systems are down. They’re working on it but...you need to get your ass back to base pronto, Ackles,” Kane said.

“What? I have another . . .” Jensen consulted his watch. “I have another 10 hours, asshole!”

“All leave’s been canceled,” Kane said shortly. “And the ambassador’s screaming for you.”

“Damn the gods,” Jensen swore. “Can’t you cover for me? We’re kinda on our honeymoon here.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Kane snapped. “If you’re not at the embassy by nineteen-hundred, you’re toast.”

Jared stepped up behind him, clothed in his silken pajamas, and wrapped an arm around Jensen’s bare torso.

“How bad?” Jared asked Kane.

“Bad. The Republic’s forces are slaughtering the villagers outside of the city, Khonsu is falling apart, the Resistance is marching in from all directions, and the diplomats are in a panic.”

“He’ll be there,” Jared told Chris firmly. “Should I come with you?” he asked Jensen.

“I don’t know . . . Kane?”

Chris sighed and scratched his nose. “Realistically, the quickest they can get the rocket ships organized and filled? You have some time.”

When Jensen started to protest, Chris held up his hand. “Jared has some time, jackass. You need to show your face before you’re branded a deserter.”

“Yeah, all right, I hear you.”

“He’ll be there,” Jared repeated. “You’ll be there,” he told Jensen. “You don’t want to piss off the people who are expediting my passport, right?”

“Why do you always have to be so sensible?” Jensen asked, wrapping his arms around Jared’s waist and pulling him in close for a kiss.

“Jeez, you two, get a room,” Kane said.

“We _have_ a room,” Jensen said pointedly. “And you’re trespassing in it.”

“Whatever. Jensen, I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Jared, get your shit together and get ready to blow this planet.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Jared smiled.

“That’s Sergeant, civilian,” Chris said, flicking Jared’s shoulder with his finger.

“Ow!”

“You don’t want _me_ to call you Princess too, do you?

“Fuck off, Sergeant.”

“That’s what I thought,” Kane said with a smirk.

Jensen was still grumbling when Jared pushed him towards the shower to get cleaned up, but his good humor returned when Jared stripped and followed him, and began thoroughly soaping his body. By the time Jensen was finished returning the favor, it was almost time for him to leave.


	5. Chapter 5

**IIIII**  
Amun, 1078 A.N.

_They lay together, sticky and sated in Jensen’s—their— bed._

_“That was, wow,” Jared said finally, and Jensen laughed._

_“No wonder—,” Jared started to add, and then broke off. He knew Jensen didn’t like being reminded that he’d serviced the alpha soldiers on his knees at the club before he had met Jensen._

_But holy blessed gods, the way Jensen had taken Jared’s cock in his mouth and swallowed him down until his nose was tickling Jared’s belly had set Jared’s skin on fire._

_He tried to tell Jensen he didn’t have to, but Jensen had pulled off then, kissed Jared dizzy, and told him this was how it was supposed to be when two people loved each other. Equal._

_Jared had marveled at the words,_ love _,_ equal _, marveled at how much his life had changed in the past few days._

_But then Jensen was sucking a bruise onto Jared’s hipbone, trailing soft kisses down Jared’s body until he was once again enveloping Jared’s hard cock in his warm wet mouth, and Jared lost the ability to think clearly._

_“Oh gods,” Jared had cried, his uncertain fingers grasping at the rumpled bed sheets. He felt his orgasm building low in his belly, and when Jensen flicked at the crown of his cock with his nimble tongue, Jared had gasped and bucked up into Jensen’s mouth. Jensen held his hips in place, pressing him down into the mattress, as Jared came so hard he saw stars._

_“That was amazing,” Jared said when he could speak again._

_Jensen lay still beside him for a moment, then turned and pulled Jared into his arms._

_“I’m going to show you so many amazing things, Jared. I can’t wait to show you around Aten, can’t wait to show you off. My gorgeous little fertile.”_

_Jared smiled. “Not so little. I’m almost as tall as you.”_

_Jensen chuckled. “You’re going to be taller than me, I know it. I’m going to call you ‘little’ for as long as I can get away with it. ”_

_“What’s it like?” Jared asked. “Is it so different from Amun?”_

_Jensen wiped at the sweat on his forehead and fanned his face with a paperback book that rested on the night stand. “Well, it’s a hell of a lot cooler, that’s for sure.”_

_Jared laughed. “You’re such a baby about a little heat, Jensen.”_

_“A little heat? Hah. Just wait. In my home town, you can stand outside at high noon and not even break a sweat.”_

_“Sounds chilly.” Jared said. “Baby,” he added under his breath._

_“Baby!”_

_Jared was playing with the firm muscles of Jensen’s chest as he listened to Jensen speak, tracing lines into his flesh and circling Jensen’s sensitive nipples with his long, nimble fingers._

_“Tell me more,” Jared urged._

_“Well...the sun rises in the east at home, not in the north.”_

_Jared wrinkled up his nose. “That’s just wrong.”_

_“Also, toilets flush in the opposite direction.”_

_“What, the handles?”_

_“Nope, the water. And coffee, gods I miss coffee beans.”_

_Jared was still puzzling out how water could flush in a different direction. “Wait, what’s that, something I should learn to fix? Like coffee beans and rice?”_

_Jensen made a gagging sound. “Never mind. I’ll show you when we get home.”_

_Jensen held him for hours and told Jared about ice cream and football and vid channels that weren’t censored, and Jared’s eyes grew wider and wider. All the plans Jensen was making made Jared feel dizzy with possibilities. When he was a boy, his only dream had been to marry a nice alpha and work a farm just down the road from his parents. That he was now imagining that he could fly among the stars and make a home for himself across the sky—it was overwhelming._

_“I can’t wait,” Jared said when Jensen had stopped talking for several moments._

_“For what? Which part?”_

_“All of it. It all sounds amazing, Jensen, but...”_

_Jensen tensed. “But?”_

_“But I want to be wherever you are. I’d live on a barren asteroid to be with you.”_

_“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Jensen kissed his forehead.  “Tomorrow I’ll get the papers we need and then we’ll move into the embassy. It won’t be very comfortable...”_

_“Barren asteroid,” Jared reminded him, and Jensen’s chuckle was warm against his throat._

Jared woke from the dream drenched in sweat, the ghost of Jensen’s arms a solid weight across his hips. The afternoon nap had left him disoriented, and he sat up quickly, breathing heavily and waiting for the dream to dissipate as it always did, for Jared’s hopes to come crashing back around him.

He was still here, on Amun, in a busted up flat that only had running water two or three times a week. It was supposedly condemned, so Jared could live without fear of discovery. He’d managed to stay hidden every time the city was swept for traitors to send to the camps.

The sleazy landlord charged Jared a blow job a day for his keep, a price Jared was willing to pay to keep them safe.

There was no prettying things up now, though. He was truly a whore. He just hoped that Jensen wouldn’t be too disappointed when they finally met again. He hoped Jensen wouldn’t be able to tell with a glance how far Jared had fallen.

“Daddy?” asked the small voice next to him, and Jared couldn’t help but smile.

“Go back to sleep, Jory. Daddy just had a dream, it’s nothing to worry about.”

Jory was silent, but his breathing hadn’t evened out yet.

“Story?” the boy asked finally.

Jared flopped back against the ratty mattress where the landlord demanded his payment. He always put a towel down first, washed it straight away, but still he could feel the filth of his life infecting himself, worried that it would infect his son as well.

“Okay, bug. Which story?”

“S’cream!”

Jared smiled. “Well, you know I haven’t actually had any yet. But I’ll tell you how it was described to me by a friend.”

He’d just started telling his son how cold and sweet it would be when they finally tasted it, how many different flavors they would try until their tummies ached, when there was a knock on his door. He jumped to his feet, tensed and ready, and then smiled with relief when Danneel opened the flimsy _baya_ wood door to Jared’s squat.

“How are my boys?” Danneel asked.

“D’ni!” Jory cried, wrestling his way out of the thin blankets and running to greet her. He launched himself at Danneel, hugging her knees tight. “Present?”

“There’s my little alpha.” She giggled, a sound Jared would have been sure she was incapable of making back when they were working the floor of Isis together. “I have some _ispony_ cakes for you, little darling,” she said. “Why don’t you take them over to the windowsill to enjoy?”

As Jory toddled over to the grimy window, Jared leaned against the wall and smiled. “Danni. How are you?”

Danneel shrugged. “Good times and bad, Princess. My new ‘uncle’ is a doll, and his cupboards, goddess, they’re always full.”

 “Jory appreciates it, Danni, but I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Well, you can pay me back when you find your soldier boy.”

Jared looked away then, even as his mouth formed the required smile. “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen Danni, so, you know, please don’t get in trouble for me.”

 “Ha, trouble! I’m way too smart for those bastards.”

“I’m serious. You need to stop bringing us food, it’s not safe. I’m getting by with the tricks the landlord sends up.”

She agreed, as she did every week, to stop smuggling in food, and then they rested together on the saggy mattress, holding hands and taking comfort in the gentle touch of someone who didn’t want or demand anything. They laughed quietly as Jory, finished with his snack, wriggled his way in between them.

“Just like an alpha,” Danneel said fondly.

“He’s a cuddler like his Daddy,” Jared agreed.

“So,” Danneel said. “The next time I don’t bring you food, promise you eat some of it? You can’t take care of the kid if you’re starving yourself.” She trailed her fingers up his prominent ribs and he laughed.

“Tickles.”

“Jared. You’re wasting away.”

“I know...” Jared sighed. The truth was, he was hungry constantly. The food the landlord gave him for ‘favors’ to his friends barely covered what Jory ate in a week. But he couldn’t bear to eat food that his child needed. He’d just have to get by, like he always had.

Jared watched the sunlight shift across the floor and tried not to think of Jensen, of the others lost when Khonsu had fallen to the Resistance. Except of course they weren’t the Resistance anymore; they were the victors. Black-clad soldiers had swarmed the city after the last of the Protectorate forces had left, calling themselves the New Amun Army. They rounded up everybody they deemed traitors for consorting with the enemy and sent them off to camps to learn to be good citizens. Danneel was the only person he knew from the old days who had escaped this fate besides him, by posing as the ‘niece’ of one of the NAA officers. When he had died in a minor uprising, she found another ‘uncle,’ and then another.

“So what’s going on out there?” Jared asked. “I’m starting to go stir-crazy in here.”

“Starting, hah.”

He stuck his tongue out at her.

“I heard they released Sheppard from the camps,” she said.

“No way, really?”

She laughed. “That crazy bastard. Last I heard he’d been sentenced to death for trying to organize a gambling ring inside, but you know him. Always skates by somehow.”

Jared was thinking over that bit of news, wondering if maybe Sheppard could help him get in touch with one of the refugee organizations, when he was pulled from his thoughts by a thunderous crack. He jerked upright, eyes round with terror, and watched as his door was smashed into bits.

“Daddy?” Jory asked. Jared tapped him on the lips, their signal that he needed to be quiet and hide. The boy scampered across the bed and took refuge in the tiny closet.

Jared stood and saw Pellegrino in the doorway, kicking bits of the cheap door aside. He was dressed in the black uniform of the New Amun Army. Behind him, he heard Danneel gasp.

“What do you want?” Jared snapped.

“I heard I might find you here,” Pellegrino said. “What a cozy picture you two make.”

“Danneel, get out of here,” Jared said calmly. “Go away and don’t come back.”

“You heard him,” Pellegrino told her coldly. “Unless you want to be charged with whoring around and sent to the camps.”

“Go!” Jared said, “I can handle this.” Danneel fled.

“So you found me,” Jared said after she was gone. “Now what?”

“Now you’re mine, and we get married like we were supposed to years ago.” He eyed Jared up and down. “You’re lucky I still want anything to do with a slut like you.”

“Are you insane? I’m not marrying you.” Jared felt naked under Pellegrino’s assessing gaze, even though he was dressed in his silk trousers and tank, and he reached for a soft bamboo sweater to wrap around his body.

“You look wretched, whore. Once we’re married, we can get you fattened up so you can start popping out babies. Officers’ families get the best rations.”

Jared shuddered. “I’d rather die than let you father my children.”

“You swore a vow to your poor dead parents, Jared. What kind of son would you be if you broke that vow?”

“You’re right, my parents _are_ dead, and I only agreed to marry you for their sakes. So just leave, get out of here. Khonsu is full of fertiles who need mates. I’m not one of them.”

“You don’t seem to understand, Jared. You’re _mine_ , end of story. You had your little rebellion, tried to run off with one of the enemy fighters, but that didn’t work out so well for you, did it? Just one of hundreds of abandoned fertiles left behind when those cowards fled.”

The room was too small for Jared to escape Pellegrino’s touch. The alpha leaned in close and scented his neck. Jared shuddered in revulsion.

 “I see your wooing techniques haven’t improved over the years,” Jared said with a brittle laugh. “Why don’t you just club me over the head and throw me over your shoulder? Drag me back to your cave?”

Pellegrino’s eyes sparkled as though he liked that idea, liked it a lot. He stepped closer and squeezed Jared’s wrist between his fingers. “I don’t need to woo you, Jared. You’re already mine. What I need to do is teach you some fucking manners.” His grip was grinding the bones of Jared’s wrist together, but he refused to give Pellegrino the satisfaction of flinching. Instead, he slapped him with his free hand, and the look of stunned surprise on Pellegrino’s face was worth the kick to the stomach that sent him flying across the room and crashing into the wall.

“Daddy!” a small voice cried, and then Jory was running to him and throwing himself in Jared’s arms. “Daddy okay?” he asked, frightened tears welling in his large green eyes.

“Daddy’s fine,” Jared gasped, struggling for breath. One of his ribs felt splintered. He pushed himself to his knees, then climbed slowly to his feet, Jory clutched protectively to his chest.

 “Mark, this is Jory.” Jared’s body was shaking, but his voice was strong. “My son.”

Pellegrino’s face was pale and his eyes glittered with fury.

“So, the whore has a bastard-child. What a surprise.”

Jared flinched. He didn’t care what names he was called, but nobody would speak to his son like that.

“So now you know why I can’t marry you. Just go away Pellegrino, leave us in peace.”

“You’ve been hiding away since the glorious day the Protectorate’s forces left. Nobody knows about this child.” Pellegrino’s eyes were calculating.

“So?”

Pellegrino pulled out his laser pistol. “So nobody will know if the bastard is gone.”

Jared felt icy terror flood his body, and he backed up a step.

“Filthy whore. Your bastard will sully my good name with the new government, my standing in the army,” Pellegrino hissed. “Leave him to me, I’ll take care of him. Then you’ll finally be mine.”

Every protective instinct he had cried for him to neutralize the threat to his child. It was an effort to keep his movements calm, his voice cool. “You’re crazy. I’ll never let you touch my boy.” He set Jory down gently and the boy hid behind Jared, clutching at his legs in fear. “Go away, Pellegrino. Leave us alone. You aren’t going to hurt him.”

“No? How are you going to stop me?”

Jared pulled a dagger, Jensen’s dagger, from the pocket of his sweater. He felt like his body was going to vibrate apart, he was shaking so badly, but the knife in his hand barely trembled.

Pellegrino laughed. “I’m sorry, you think you’re going to stab _me_? With a Protectorate weapon? You’re even stupider than I thought.”

“Go away, Pellegrino,” Jared repeated. “Leave us in peace.”

“You’re not going to kill me,” Pellegrino scoffed. “You don’t know how to kill!”

“I swear by all the gods, I would die for my child, Mark, and I’d kill for him too. Go away!”

Pellegrino lunged at him then, trying to get past Jared to Jory, and Jared didn’t hesitate. As Pellegrino tried to shove him aside, Jared raised the dagger and felt it slide into the soft skin between his ribs. One moment Pellegrino was coming at him, and the next Jared felt hot blood bursting over his fist as Pellegrino’s lifeblood drained out of him from where Jared had thrust the dagger through his heart.

“You...” Pellegrino looked stunned, as though he couldn’t believe Jared had actually done it, as though he’d actually doubted Jared would kill to protect the only good thing in his life. Then his face went slack and the light faded from his eyes.

“Swine,” Jared spat at the fallen corpse. He was rigid with fury. A small tap at his knee brought him back to himself, and he stared at the body on the floor, feeling sick dread replace the cold fury. Gods, Jared was in trouble. Pellegrino was an officer in the damned army. Jared would hang for sure.

“Daddy!”

“Shh, it’s okay baby. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Not ever.”

Jared felt sure that he should feel some kind of remorse for taking a life, but he felt nothing. He’d stab a hundred more to keep his son safe. He wiped the knife off on a towel and slid it back into the folds of his sweater.

“C’mon, Jory,” he said firmly, scooping up the tiny body, wincing just a bit as his ribs protested the movement. “Don’t look at the bad man. It’s time for us to go.”

*** * ***

Jared pounded on the door of the tiny shack where Sheppard was supposedly hiding out after his release from the camps. The sun was almost below the horizon when he left his flat for the last time, and he stayed close to the shadows, ducking into burned out buildings or hiding in alleys whenever he thought he detected the staccato beat of combat boots on the cracked pavement.

His heart was a panicked _theyes_ bird, fluttering madly like it could break free of his ribcage at any moment.

Jared wasn’t even sure that’d be such a bad thing. He’d be much more capable of surviving this new world if he were heartless.

Danni had told him that there was still— _always, Princess_ —a black market operating near the river, and when she needed perfumes or clothing to please her ‘uncles,’ or the shots she and Jared injected every six months to prevent pregnancy and disease, she would try her luck down by the banks of the Sharuna.

“Not that those are always effective,” she’d told Jared with a wink as she bounced Jory on her knee one afternoon.

He stood in the shadows, watching people walk up and down the boardwalk, ducking into shadows to complete surreptitious transactions. One of the shadows broke away and sidled up to him.

“What’re you looking for?” the gruff voice asked.

“Information. I’m trying to find Mark Sheppard.”

“That old fraud,” the man said. “What’d you need him for? You need a pimp, I’m your guy.”

Jared produced his dagger and the man jumped back. “Easy, kid! What the hell?”

“I’m not fucking around,” Jared said through gritted teeth. “Do you know where he is or not?”

Scowling, the man gave him directions to a small outbuilding behind the old cannery. “And don’t come down here no more!” he called after Jared as they set off again.

“Sheppard!” Jared continued hammering on the door. “Open up!” he shouted, nearly hysterical.

In his arms, Jory shifted uncomfortably, clutching harder at Jared’s neck, and Jared took a deep breath, tried to calm himself down. Freaking out his boy wasn’t going to help anything.

“Sheppard!”

The door finally swung open and Sheppard stood in front of him, eyebrows raised, a fat _esuyp_ roll between his pursed lips. His ‘fancy’ purple pants had seen better days, and his white undershirt was dingy and stained.

“Ahh, it’s my Princess. Looking for work? Gotta tell you, I don’t think the kid is going to help you pick up johns, but maybe we can figure something out.”

Jared ignored him and pushed his way past Sheppard and into the shack.

“Yeah, sure, come on in,” Sheppard said.

Jared paced up and down the room, trying to find the words to explain. Three steps, turn, three steps, turn.

“What is it, Princess? I’m a little busy here,” Sheppard said as he gestured at the empty room. “Also, I hear you’ve caught the eye of one of the captains, and no offense, but I don’t need that kinda heat. I only just got out of the re-ed camp last week.”

Jared narrowed his eyes. “It was you, wasn’t it? Danneel wasn’t followed— _you_ told Pellegrino where to find me!”

“So what if I did?” Sheppard shrugged. “I was just helping one of my flock find a stable, loving mate in our glorious new republic.”

“‘So what if’—that’s how you got out, isn’t it?” Jared asked in disbelief. “You idiot!”

“Jared,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “Say what you want and be gone, you’re starting to annoy me.”

“He’s dead,” Jared blurted out.

“Who’s dead?”

“Pellegrino’s dead, I killed him.”

“You killed Captain Pellegrino? Holy _sheyu_ , Jared.” Sheppard’s eyes widened and he looked around as if expecting to be arrested on the spot. “I’m sorry, have we met? Bye now, little fertile. Have a nice life.”

He made to push Jared towards the door, but Jared shrugged him off. “We have to get out of here, we have to get to Aten.”

“Oh, you have to get to Aten?” Sheppard laughed sarcastically. “Good luck with that. I hear a passport only costs a kidney these days.”

“I have to... I have to get to Jensen. I have to take our son to him.”

“You have to—wait a minute. You’re telling me that’s Sergeant Ackles’ boy? That kid’s the son of a Protectorate officer?”

“Yes, dammit,” Jared said impatiently. “Help me, Sheppard, please! What can I do to convince you? Do you want—” Jared broke off and glanced down his body and back up to meet Sheppard’s eye. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Oh, keep your shirt on,” Sheppard said. “I don’t want your skinny omega ass. But if I can arrange to get us out of here, I’m coming with you. You’re holding a golden ticket in your arms, Princess, and I want in.”

“Yes, of course,” Jared agreed quickly. “We’ll go together.”

Sheppard’s trademark grin spread across his face as he reached for Jory’s small hand, taking it in his.

“Hey, kid. Meet your Uncle Sheppard.”

* * *

_“Have you ever been off-planet?” Jensen asked._

_“I’ve never even been in a hover-copter,” Jared admitted._

_“You’ll love it, I promise. The first few days onboard you can look out the portholes, watch us sail past the stars. It’s incredible. Then when we reach the Sobek nebula, we’ll all go into a short-term hibernation chamber. And when we wake up, voila. Aten.”_

_Jared caught Jensen’s lower lip between his teeth. “Hmm, sounds amazing. Can we hibernate together?”_

_Jensen laughed. “Sorry, it’s just one per customer. But it won’t even feel like going to sleep for the night, more like taking a nap. It feels incredibly short, and it’s the best way to save ship resources.”_

The perilous flight out of Khonsu was nothing like what Jensen had described.

Jared and Jory spent several days hiding out in the shack while Sheppard worked his magic, calling on old contacts, digging through rubble to find all the secret caches of money and black-market goods he’d hidden around the city, and having one of his shadier acquaintances draw up forged exit visas for the three of them.   Jared wondered if it was the same man he’d pulled a knife on down by the river, and he stayed out of sight in the bathroom when the papers were dropped off, just in case.

“I’m spending all my hard-earned cash on bribes and fake papers, little Princess,” Sheppard told him. “Your soldier had better reward me well for taking such good care of you.”

“Ha!” Jared retorted. “If we weren’t traveling with you, the officials on Hathor would send you right back here to the camps.” Sheppard looked indignant but stopped pestering Jared about how much money this trip was costing him. Jared knew he was right—otherwise Sheppard would have been planning his escape the minute he’d been released by Pellegrino instead of hiding out in a shack getting stoned. Fleeing Amun was one thing, thousands attempted it every week. Fleeing with the son of a Protectorate soldier increased their odds of success astronomically.

He would have liked to say good-bye to Danneel, at least maybe leave her a note, but it was too dangerous. Jared was worried enough that she’d be in trouble if his landlord ran his mouth off to the authorities, and decided it was best if he just disappeared before anybody could pin something concrete on her by their association.

Finally, under the cloak of darkness, they made their way to the abandoned Aten military base, now operating as an import/export docking station. Sheppard had secured them passage on a cargo ship bound for Hathor that ran a healthy side business smuggling refugees off-planet. Jared was surprised at how lax the security was around the base; he’d been expecting armed guards and checkpoints, and was already fretting about how well his forged documentation would stand up under inspection. When he asked, Sheppard had told him that smugglers weren’t the only ones getting rich on the backs of the refugees.

After three days alternately sweltering and freezing in a cargo hold, crammed in with dozens of other refugees, Sheppard had slithered up to Jared and told him the quartermaster was willing to find them an actual living compartment, for a price.

“I’m not doing that anymore,” Jared said firmly.

“Okay, okay, just checking,” Sheppard said amiably. But the next day, Jared had awoken from an uneasy sleep to the sounds of Jory crying and struggling to breathe in the press of bodies all around them. Terrified that Jory might actually suffocate in the hold, he told Sheppard to take the room if it was still available.

“But, will you tell him that I won’t be knotted? See what he says?”

Sheppard had relayed the message and the quartermaster had agreed. Jared had turned the care of his son over to Sheppard, with a hissed warning that if one freckle on the boy was harmed, Jared would personally see that Sheppard’s balls were separated from his body.

“Easy, Princess, I’ll take good care of him,” Sheppard said. “He’s our ticket to the new world, after all.”

Jared was moved into the quartermaster’s bunk, with Sheppard and Jory in a sleeping berth little larger than a coffin two doors away. After the second night the smuggler had told Jared that he and his ‘no knotting’ rule could go fuck themselves, and he’d done as he’d pleased. But he’d moved Sheppard and Jory to a larger private cabin as a ‘favor’ to Jared.

He lay in bed each night of the journey, tied to a man he hated, and reminded himself of his purpose. This was for Jory, everything was for Jory. And if the gods were good, they would be reunited with Jensen soon; Jory would have a father, and they could be a family.

It would be worth it when they made it to Hathor. It would have to be.


	6. Chapter 6

**IIIII  I**

_Jared stood in the street watching Jensen walk away, lips still tingling from their last kiss. When he could no longer see Jensen, he finally returned to the apartment to start gathering their belongings. He hummed softly to himself, the wedding song, as he packed up his meager possessions and carefully placed the photo of his parents into his small satchel, the one he’d carried with him all the way to Khonsu. The dagger he hid in the deep pockets of his favorite sweater._

_He rummaged through Jensen’s pantry to find something to make for supper, but the cabinets held only_ baya _seeds. Jared grabbed his satchel and walked down the three flights of stairs to buy something to eat from one of the many vendors._

_“Jared!”_

_He turned and smiled when he saw Sandy running towards him, until he saw the look on her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked._

_“They’re leaving,” she said breathlessly. “All the soldiers are leaving, where’s Jensen?”_

_“He got called back to duty. Sergeant Kane said they’re preparing to leave, but it will take a few days.”_

_“No, Jared, they’re going now! They’re launching the passenger shuttles from the hangar behind the base camp, I saw with my own eyes!”_

_“What?” He looked around, but the streets were full of people going about their business.  “How come nobody knows?”_

_A block away, he heard a woman start wailing, and as news spread rapidly even with all the com systems down, Jared saw wave after wave of people stop whatever they were doing to rush home or find their families._

_“No,” he breathed, looking around. “No, Jensen said he’d come back for me.”_

_“You’d better get there Jared, fast as you can.”_

_“Come with me?” he asked, and she shook her head. “There’s so many people there, Jared...and if, if you don’t make it onto one of the ships,” she broke off, her large brown eyes full of sympathy. “Go to Isis if you don’t make it, Danneel’s trying to find a place to hide us, keep us safe.”_

_The large base camp was five kilometers out of the city center, and Jared ran the whole way, dodging and weaving around people, vehicles, even ducking to avoid a skycycle that was flying way too low to the ground. The streets teemed with people, and the closer he got to the base, the more chaotic everything became._

_“Jensen!” he yelled as he tried to push his way through the throngs of people desperately trying get to the launch pads, to secure passage out of Khonsu. His voice was a whisper in a storm, and nobody heard his cries._

_He watched, stricken, as shuttle after shuttle blasted into the dark sky, all throughout the night and to the break of dawn. One by one they departed until they were all gone, until he was left alone in a sea of people._

* * *

Kane read through Jared’s file again, remembering how frantic Jensen had been to leave the base, to return to the city and find Jared. He’d been out of his mind, so beyond reason that Kane had to physically restrain him, almost knock him unconscious, to get him onto the last shuttle.

He didn’t—couldn’t—regret that decision. He was a soldier, and he’d never leave a fellow soldier behind. But knowing how close Jared had been, just on the other side of the fence... He’d spent a year watching Jensen consumed by grief, beating himself up for not saving Jared, contacting every refugee organization he could find for word of Jared, until Kane had gently suggested that it was time to move on, that maybe he should start dating again.

Gods, what a mess.

Jared turning up alive was nothing short of miraculous. Apparently he’d finally fled Amun after he’d been attacked by a Resistance officer, ending up on the planet Hathor, which was swarming with refugees.

It was everything Jensen had been hoping for that long, first year home.

 But now Jensen had Chase.

The file, Jared’s file, sat on the table in front of Chris like an accusation.

He’d chosen a quiet restaurant, several blocks away from the heart of Akoris, where they’d be able to discuss the situation without a lot of prying eyes. This was his preferred location for breaking this kind of news, and he tipped the wait staff generously so they would not hover or grow impatient if the meal dragged out.

He’d had this conversation many times before with other alpha soldiers and their families, and it never really got any easier. Some greeted his news with joy, some with disdain or flat-out denials.

He’d never had to break this sort of news to a friend though, and his nerves were getting the better of him. As he waited, he fiddled nervously with his glass of ice water, and kept pushing his hair—considerably grown out since his honorable discharge—out of his eyes.

He’d watched Jensen become a shadow of himself after they returned to Aten, but his own journey from the war had been difficult as well. The Unified Stellar Systems was a powerful organization, not used to tasting defeat in battle. That the war had cost so many lives and accomplished so little was not something the USS wished to acknowledge.

When he’d returned home, he discovered that nobody wanted to speak of the war on Amun.

He'd drifted for awhile, working odd jobs and checking in on Jensen periodically, until he discovered an organization dedicated to helping the Amun refugees, and specifically, helping the forgotten orphans of the war find their alpha parents.

It was a bit of a scandal, again that nobody was really talking about, how so many children had been born to the fertiles on Amun in this day and age, when the birth control shots were readily available on every planet that had been colonized. The disruption of daily life caused by war was obviously one answer, but Chris had also heard of pharmaceutical companies that made billions by sending cheap replacement drugs to the poorer planets.

Well. It didn’t matter so much _now_ how it had happened; the reality was that thousands of children had been conceived between the alpha soldiers and the civilians, and the new government of Amun wanted nothing to do with them.

“Kane!”

He looked up to see Jensen and Chase enter the dimly lit restaurant. He stood and shook hands with them, not sure how he would find the words to tell Jensen that Jared was alive, that Jensen had a son.

“It’s great to see you, Kane!” Jensen said as he slid into the booth after Chase. He was anxious, Chris could tell, his eyes darting to the file on the table and then back up to Chris, searching.

“I have some news,” Chris started slowly. “It’s going to be difficult to hear, for both of you.”

Across the table, Jensen held Chase’s hand as he waited for Chris to continue.

There were no words. Chris had participated in dozens of similar conversations with alpha soldiers and their spouses, but it had never hit so close to home. Jensen was going to be devastated.

“This is about Jared, isn’t it?” Chase finally said, and the two alphas stared at him.

“How—?” Jensen asked, and Chase shrugged.

“You talk in your sleep sometimes,” Chase said quietly.

Chris swallowed hard and opened the folder, sliding out a photo of Jared, hollow-eyed and desperately thin, that had been taken at the Hathor refugee center.

“Oh, Jared,” Jensen said quietly. Then Chris handed Jensen the second picture.

The child had green eyes flecked with gold, and a dusting of freckles across his nose. He was the spitting image of Jensen.

“Jensen?” Chase asked. “What is this?”

But Jensen couldn’t speak, couldn’t take his eyes from the photo.

Jared was alive. And he’d given birth to Jensen’s son.

“Where are they?" Jensen asked, voice husky.

“Hathor,” Chris said.

“What’s the boy’s name?”

Chris searched his face before saying, “J.R. His name is J.R., but Jared calls him Jory. I guess because the boy couldn’t pronounce his own name very well when he started talking...”

J.R. Merciful gods, Jensen had a son he’d never seen, a son who was talking, and walking, and saying his name wrong. It hurt too much to think about. He’d been so sure Jared was dead, so sure he could never have survived the madness that befell Khonsu when the Protectorate forces left.

“We have to go.” Jensen tore his eyes away from the photo with considerable effort, and looked up to see his husband watching him warily.

“We both have to go, Chase. Please.”

Chase nodded, looking unhappy but understanding.

“Okay, Jensen. It’s okay, it will be all right.”

Jensen closed his eyes and pulled Chase to him, kissing him tenderly on the temple. “It will be all right,” he agreed. “Everything will be all right.”

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/tipsy_kitty/media/ZZZZ03-400_zps24b0bdb2.jpg.html)

* * *

Chris checked the address in his file again and frowned at the strip club in front of him, dubiously named Slippery Inn. The posters out front left nothing to the imagination, and actually made him blush. He was going to have to set up a meeting between Jared and the Ackles’ in a more neutral location, he decided. Chase did not seem like someone who would appreciate this sort of ‘local color.’

He pushed open the door gingerly, wishing he had a handkerchief to use on the greasy handle. It was only 2 pm, and the omega dancing on stage before the half-empty room looked like he’d seen better days. Probably addicted to _doya_ leaves. Chris sighed. He could not help everyone; some days he wasn’t even sure he was helping anyone.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim interior, he was startled to find Sheppard sitting alone at the bar, nursing a glass of _baya_ whiskey.

“Sheppard?” he asked. “Is that you?”

“Ahh, Sergeant Kane!” Sheppard jumped to his feet and hurried over to Chris, steering him further into the interior.  “You must be here about my little brother.”

At his look of disbelief, Sheppard continued smoothly, “What, you didn’t notice the resemblance between me and the lovely Jared?”

“Save it,” Chris said impatiently. “I’m not really interested in the lies you told to get here, I just want to see Jared.”

He heard a voice call, “Sergeant Kane!,” and he turned just in time to avoid being knocked on his ass. Jared enveloped Chris in a bear hug, his skinny arms surprisingly strong.

“I can’t believe you’re really here!” When he pulled back to look at Chris, his smile lit up the dingy room.

“Jared, you’re looking . . .” Chris couldn’t bring himself to lie and say Jared was looking well. He was emaciated; it was obvious that every scrap of food he’d found in the past two years had gone towards nourishing his son. “It’s so good to see you, again,” he finished lamely.

Jared looked around the club expectantly. “Is Jensen...?”

“He’s, ah, he was held up in shuttle customs.” Chris glanced around, saw Sheppard edging closer to eavesdrop on them. “Look, can we talk privately for a minute?”

“Of course! My room’s upstairs.” Jared set his tray of empty drinks down on the bar and told Sheppard to tell the boss he’d be right back. He grabbed Chris by the hand and tugged him towards the stairwell. Chris climbed the stairs after Jared, looking around with dismay at the dirty, urine-stained floors, averting his eyes from a couple enthusiastically going at it on the second floor landing.

“This is...” Chris cast about for something positive to say.

“It’s awful, I know. I try to keep Jory upstairs and out of sight as much as possible, but gods, he’s getting so big, wanting to explore...” Jared sighed. “Well, I’ve been telling myself this is only temporary.”

The room was small, much too small for a grown man and a growing boy, and was bare of any décor save a simple bed, a small table and chair, and the photo of Jared’s parents that Chris had last seen back in Khonsu. The few clothes they owned were folded neatly on the floor, and on the bed Chris thought he recognized the dog-eared paperback Jensen had been reading on Amun before everything fell apart. But the room was tidy, and smelled clean and fresh compared to the grim hallway just beyond.

Jared reached for a long wrap sweater to cover his work uniform, which consisted of a pair of tight black pants and a strange, black strappy top that reminded Chris of lawn furniture...or bondage gear.

Jory was sitting on the bed, waving a stick through the air, probably pretending it was a skycycle. His eyes lit up when he saw Jared.

 “So, about Jensen...” Chris started to say. Jared nodded expectantly, gesturing for Chris to take the chair while he sat on the bed. Jory immediately climbed into Jared’s lap. The boy smiled shyly at Chris and then buried his head in Jared’s sweater.

“He made it out of Khonsu okay? He was fine when I saw him last, but I was afraid he’d been injured, or one of the ships had gone down...it was impossible to get any actual news, you know. Everything was rumors and propaganda.”

“He’s fine,” Chris said. “He’s fine, and he’s here on Hathor.”

“He’s here,” Jared whispered into his son’s soft, blonde hair, tears of happiness welling in his eyes. “I can’t believe he’s actually here, that we’re finally under the same sky again.”

Chris studied his feet. How was he supposed to tell Jared about Chase? The file was so cut and dried, a brief biography and intake form, a photo of Jared with haunted eyes. None of that bore any relevance to the sight of Jared in front of him, overwhelmed with joy because his love, his mate, had finally found him.

“I have to tell you something,” Chris started slowly. “Jensen was pretty messed up after the evac—”

But Jared wasn’t listening. He was cuddling his child on his lap, and telling him how wonderful it would be to finally meet his father.

And suddenly Chris was pissed. This was _not_ his job, _not_ what he’d signed up for. He could deliver bad news about soldiers who hadn’t made it out alive, refugees who should have made it to a certain check-point but had never arrived. This was the kind of news that survivors expected to hear, devastating as it was.

But this? Telling a man who was obviously still in love that his lover had moved on, had found another?

No. Chris couldn’t – wouldn’t – do it.

 _This is Jensen’s mess to clean up_ , Chris thought grimly.

“Look, Jared,” he said, rising to his feet. “Jensen was, as I said, held up at customs, but I’ll go grab him and we’ll be back here within an hour or two.”

“Of course,” Jared said happily. “Of course, whatever you need to do. I just can’t believe he’s finally here. You can’t even imagine what it took to get here.”

At that Jared’s eyes darkened briefly and Chris, unfortunately, could imagine. He could, but he didn’t want to. He’d heard enough horror stories to steal years of his sleep.

“Two hours, three tops,” he promised Jared.

“Of course, Sergeant Kane, I’ll be waiting here. Jory and I will be here.”

* * *

“They’re dicking you over, Princess,” Sheppard said, his voice laced with annoyance.

In the months that they’d been on Hathor, Sheppard had grown increasingly frustrated with his inability to make a quick buck. Hathor was even harder to work than Khonsu had been after the regime change, and he talked constantly about how great his life would finally be when he made it to Aten, his ‘true’ home, where he would glory in the riches and wealth to be made in the heart of the Unified Stellar Systems.

He had no contacts here and the streets and clubs were filled with established pimps. Hathor, he was fond of saying, did not seem to appreciate how lucky it was to have a Sheppard in its midst.

“Sergeant Kane said they were coming,” Jared replied. “You’re getting your hackles up for nothing.”

He was a little amazed at how calm he sounded, considering his thoughts were echoing Sheppard’s, increasingly panicked as time passed. And inwardly, he was a little impressed with himself, when he thought back on how intimidated he’d felt when he first met Sheppard, when he’d been begging for a job at Club Isis, or, gods, even a cup of broth.

Sheppard shook his head. “I’ve seen this happen before. He’s going to get some lackey to bring you a briefcase of cash and it’ll be so long, Princess. You need to get your sweet ass over to Jensen’s hotel and start with the kissy faces, or we’ll be stuck in this shit hole forever.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Jared, sweet boy. Listen to your big brother Sheppard. I know how the world works, and we’ll never get anywhere if we sit around waiting for someone to rescue us.”

Jared knew Sheppard was being paranoid, but on the other hand...what had sitting around and waiting gotten him? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing but a dead NAA officer and federal charges that would have seen him put to death, leaving Jory completely unprotected.

Sheppard was paranoid, Jared decided, but he was also right. It was time to take charge of his own life, and he would start by seeking out Jensen on his own. Sheppard had weaseled the hotel name out of Kane on his way out the door, made a couple of calls on his newly acquired com, and handed Jared the slip of paper with Jensen’s room number.

“You’ll watch Jory while I’m gone?”

“Of course,” Sheppard purred. “You just go get your man, I’ll take care of the little dear.”

**_* * *_ **

Jared smoothed down the only decent outfit he owned, the blue silken trousers and tank that Jensen had always loved. It was the silvery blue of the sky above Khonsu at dusk, and Jensen had always said that it made Jared’s chameleon eyes finally pick a color and stay that way.

“For a little while, at least,” Jensen had added with a sly grin as he peeled the clothes from Jared’s body.

He rapped on the door, mindful of how shabby even his best outfit looked amidst the opulence of the Hotel Hierakonpolis. The hallway tile was built of cool marble threaded through with gold, and gilt framed paintings hung on the walls between each suite.

The door opened and Jared’s bright smile faltered when he saw a strange man, young and handsome and healthy, open the door.

“Are you here about the towels?” the man asked, a look of puzzlement on his face.

Jared took a step back, glanced quickly at the room number again and then the scrap of paper Sheppard had pushed into his hand.

_“Don’t let the fish off the hook, Princess,” Sheppard had said. “You go find him yourself. One look at you and we’ll see the backside of this backwards galaxy for good.”_

“I’m sorry, is this...” Jared trailed off. “I’m looking for Jensen Ackles? Is this the right room?”

The man’s face froze and he gave Jared a considering look. Jared tried to cover the _ispony_ berry smudge Jory had left on the sleeve of his sweater with his other hand.

“You’re Jared,” the stranger said uneasily.

“Yes, I’m sorry, and you are? Oh! Are you here with Sergeant Kane?”

“Please come in, Jared. Chris and Jensen went to find you but they haven’t returned yet.”

Jared stepped into the room and his breath caught in his throat. The flat he’d squatted in for the past three years in Khonsu would fit in here fifteen times over. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a panoramic view of the city, which Jared noted didn’t look nearly as seedy from twenty stories up.

“Is everything okay?” Jared asked, worry for Jensen blossoming in his chest.

“I’m Chase,” the man said, shaking Jared’s hand. “I’m... I’m Jensen’s husband.”

“You’re Jensen’s...” Jared felt the blood drain from his face, and the scrap of paper with Jensen’s room number written on it fluttered unnoticed to the floor.

“Please, sit,” the man, Chase, said kindly, but Jared’s limbs felt frozen, he was unable to move.

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” Jared asked woodenly. “Please. Please tell me you’re lying.”

“I’m sorry, Jared. We’ve been married a year.”

“A year,” he repeated. It was hard to breathe under the weight of this news. Jensen had been married for a year, while Jared had been providing sexual favors to his disgusting landlord just to keep Jory sheltered and fed and safe from the camps.

In his worst nightmares, when he imagined Jensen burned up in a rocket crash or casting him aside because of the things Jared had done to stay alive—the things he’d let other alphas do to him in his quest for Jory’s survival—never in his wildest imaginings had he pictured Jensen moving on, starting a life with someone else.

How stupid he’d been; what a child. Again.

Married. Jensen had married this pretty omega, this Chase, while Jared was falling and failing and desperately clinging to the hope that Jensen would return for him.

He wondered distantly where Jensen and Chase had honeymooned, and found himself laughing a bit hysterically.

“I understand this must be a shock,” Chase was saying. “But don’t worry, Jensen and I fully intend to help you with Jory’s expenses.”

Jared blinked at him, suddenly angry. “Jory needs his father, not your charity.”

“It’s not charity. We don’t have much, but we’ve both agreed that Jensen should provide support.”

 _We don’t have much._ Gods above, the watch Chase was wearing would keep Jory fed for a year. It had probably been a wedding gift from Jensen. To his horror, Jared felt his eyes welling with tears, and he blinked them back angrily.

“Jensen said he’d come back for me.”

“He tried, he tried for more than a year, Jared.” Chase went to the small refrigerator in the corner and pulled out a bottle of ale, offering one to Jared, who shook his head numbly. “He had only just decided it was time to move on, to get his life back, when we met at a charity function for veterans.”

Jared felt his heart ice over, cold as the light from a dead star. This couldn’t be happening. He felt all his dreams crumble into dust. Everything he’d survived, everything he’d endured....

Chase was studying him. “We had talked about bringing you both back to Aten, but that doesn’t seem like such a great idea. You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

No.

No, this couldn’t be. Jory was supposed to go to Aten, to grow up in the hub of the Unified Stellar Systems. He was supposed to attend nice, clean schools and have a home that wasn’t also a brothel, and eat healthy meals that hadn’t been scrounged from garbage cans. He was supposed to have everything Jared never had, everything Jared had lost when his family home had burned to ash.

 They couldn’t leave Jory behind; it wasn’t possible.

“You don’t have to take me,” Jared said quickly, the words catching in his throat. “Just, please, just take my son, just take Jory. You have to, _please_!”

“What!” Chase looked aghast. “That’s impossible, Jared! Your son belongs with you; we can’t take him away with us!”

“No, you have to, you have to take him with you!” Jared felt his desperation growing, couldn’t this stupid omega see? There was nothing for Jory here, nothing but struggle and pain. They had to take him.

“There’s no way!” Chase cried. “We’re married, Jared, we want our own family! I promise we’ll help you out, but we can’t possibly take J.R. home with us.”

So that was it. They would leave Jory behind to live on the streets like a rat, and they would raise a passel of happy, well-fed, babies.

Jared drew himself up to his full height and stared Chase down. “You’re telling me you won’t take Jensen’s son home with you.”

“We can’t!”

“Tell Jensen to meet me at my room above the club tonight,” Jared said. “You can both come, but I need to hear from Jensen that you can’t take Jory with you. If I hear it from him, I won’t bother you anymore.”

 “We’ll be there tonight at eight,” Chase said.

Jared nodded curtly and left, walking down the hallway, waiting for the elevator, and exiting through the lobby on wobbly legs. He was desperate to keep himself together until he was far, far away from this overpriced hotel, from the omega who had taken Jensen from him.

He was such a fool.

He walked the 7 km back to the sleazy club strip, head held high and refusing to cry. He ignored the alpha tourists who propositioned him along the way.

As dusk fell over the land, the brightly colored lights of the nightclubs blocked out the light of the stars in a gaudy display.

Jared knew what he had to do. It was the only choice left to him.

Soon, Jory would be safe. And soon, Jared would be home again.

 *** * ***  
Jensen and Chris entered the cool air of his hotel room, and Jensen immediately pulled off his sweaty dress shirt. If anything, Hathor was even more sweltering than Amun had been, and while he hadn’t exactly forgotten how miserable the weather had been during his tours, remembering it and experiencing it were two very different things.

“We couldn’t find him,” Jensen started to say to his husband. Chase was standing at the window, looking at the lights of the city spread out below them. He was sipping from a bottle of _baya_ whiskey and when Jensen spoke, he didn’t answer.

“Chase? What’s wrong?”

Chase turned away from the window and faced him. The look on his face, a mixture of anger and hurt, caused Jensen’s stomach to swoop uneasily.

“Jared was here,” Chase said flatly.

“Oh gods!” Jensen crossed the room and took Chase’s hand in his. “I’m so sorry, Chase.”

“This is all my fault,” Kane fretted. “I should have told him everything when we met, but...”

Chase ignored Kane. “I told him that we couldn’t take them with us. Not as long as he’s still in love with you.”

“Oh, Chase, that’s not true.”

“You didn’t see him, Jensen. He was crushed. He’s been waiting all this time for you to swoop out of the sky and save him or something. He thought you were still in love with him. He thought you were going to get married. ” Chase’s face hardened. “Of course, he could be right, what do I know? I’m just the stupid omega who believed your lies and ignored all the times you cried out his name when you had nightmares.”

“Chase, no! You know I love you. You’re my husband now.”

“He tried to get us to take Jory home with us!”

Chris spoke up. “Jared had his heart set on Jory being raised in Aten. Life is...not easy here. Especially for the orphans of the Protectorate.”

“Well, fine, Jensen, you can all fly back home and be a happy little family.”

“No, Chase, don’t be like that.” Jensen slumped down onto the plush couch and rubbed his temples wearily. “They’ll have to stay here, it’s the only way.”

“Now, hang on . . .” Chris said.

“We could send him to one of the best private schools in the colony,” Chase said.

“Yes, of course,” Jensen agreed quickly. “He’ll still have the best we can provide, but it will have to be here instead of at home.”

“That’s not the same at all!” Chris protested. “Jory needs you in his life, Jensen!” But Jensen and Chase both ignored him as they started making plans to create a trust for Jory that Jared could use to provide for him.

“You’re talking like fools,” Chris snapped, his frustration boiling over.

“We’ll leave at 7:30,” Jensen said, dismissing Chris, and Kane left to return to his own hotel room shaking his head. _Fools_ , he thought again. They had no idea the kinds of hurdles Jared and Jory would face—had already faced—as refugees in Hathor.

Maybe he’d be able to persuade them. Maybe seeing Jared’s tiny flat above the Slippery Inn would help put things in perspective for the Aten natives.

*** * ***

“Well?” Sheppard asked with a waggle of his eyes. “How did the lover’s reunion go?”

He ran a hand through his thinning hair, his gleaming grin catching the pulsating lights of the club, turning blue-green-pink-blue, and Jared felt a stab of affection, misguided as it was. Sheppard would sell him for a song, but then, what could you expect of someone who learned to be a pimp by leading soldiers to his mother’s bed when he was only a child, barely older than Jory?

“Everything’s set,” Jared said as he forced his lips to form a smile. “Sergeant Kane is readying the paperwork, and Jensen is meeting us here at eight.”

Sheppard crowed, actually did a little dance. He picked Jory up and swung him around, muttering to Jory about all the fat cats they would fleece when they arrived on Aten. Jory smiled and nodded on cue, even though he understood little of what was being said; he loved it when his Uncle Sheppard paid him any attention.

“Get back to work, Sheppard!” Huffman, the club owner, snapped from the dais where she sat drinking wormwood every night as she watched over her employees.

“Can I tell her to fuck off now?” Sheppard asked cheerfully.

“Umm . . . maybe not just yet,” Jared said, taking his son back from Sheppard. He felt bad for lying, but his course was set. He had Jory to think about, and if ever there was a cat with more than nine lives, it was Mark Sheppard.

“I just need to go pack up my things,” Jared said. “When they... when Jensen arrives, show him to my room?”

“Of course, Princess,” Sheppard said.

Jared headed to his room to begin his preparations. After so long, so many years of uncertainty, his worries were finally gone. Everything would be okay; Jory would be protected, and Jared too. They would be okay. Jared would do whatever he could to make sure they were okay.

He took off his wedding silks, scrubbed at the stain Jory had left on the sleeve. When everything looked perfect, he slipped them on again, and then he went to the mirror, began applying the smudge of Kohl he’d traded a few nuts to a street worker for. He outlined his eyes, remembering how Sandy had done it so many years ago. He wasn’t half naked so there was no need for body glitter, but he dusted what little he had over his shoulders anyway.

It made him feel good. It made him feel like a princess and not a whore.

When he was finished with his preparations, he lit a _ravidery_ stick, smiling as the rich scent filled his room. Then he wiped his son off with a damp cloth, even as Jory squirmed away from his touch, and dressed him in his only good clothes, a blue silk outfit much like Jared’s, that Danneel had stolen from one of her ‘uncle’s’ sons.

He sang Jory the lullaby he’d learned on his mother’s knee, a sad and sorrowful song, as so many lullabies were.

“You who I cradled in my arms   
Asking as little as you can  
Little snip of a little man  
I know I’d give my life for you...”

He smoothed down Jory’s hair, blond like Jensen’s but wild and full of cowlicks like Jared’s own hair. He held his squirming son in his arms one last time, before returning to the floor of the club to leave Jory in Sheppard’s care for just a little while.

* * *

_“I don’t want you to go,” Jared said, aware and embarrassed that he sounded like a needy fertile. He had only two hours before convinced Jensen that he had to return to the military base for both their sakes. “Maybe I should just come with you.”_

_“It’ll be okay, Jared. I just need to go show my face and pacify the ambassador for a bit, and then I’ll be back.” He leaned forward and kissed Jared, soft and soulful. “Besides,” he grinned, “I want you waiting in my bed when I return.”_

_Jared studied the sky. Hover copters were setting for the base camp’s space station at regular intervals, the sound of their blades loud as they diced the air._

_“Well, when you put it like that...” he slid his hands up the soft leather of Jensen’s fatigues. “I’ll  say goodbye to the Isis girls. Pack up all my stuff.” He chuckled. “That shouldn’t take too long.”_

_A group of alphas ran past, calling out to one another that the soldiers were too busy leaving to protect the streets, and Jensen tensed._

_“Here, take this,” he said pressing his dagger into Jared’s hand._

_“I don’t think –”_

_“Please, Jared, for me. People are getting a little crazy. You don’t have to use it, gods above, I hope you never have to use it. But I’ll feel better if you have it.”_

_“Okay, of course,” Jared said, leaning in to kiss the tip of Jensen’s nose. “I’ll see you at sunup?”_

_“If not before. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”_

* * *

Three years...it wasn’t so very long, as time went, only a breath in the ancient lives of the stars. But Jensen had spent most of those moons convinced Jared could never have survived the violence that surrounded the fall of Amun’s capital city, when so many Khonsu citizens had been either killed outright or rounded up and sent to the reform camps, where they died slower, crueler deaths.

The words he’d spoken to Chase only hours before rang in his ears.

_“Chase, no, you know I love you. You’re my husband now.”_

He’d meant it when he said it; time and distance had relegated his brief time with Jared dreamy and insubstantial. Time had passed, and he’d convinced himself that his feelings for Jared were born in the hell of war time, that his love couldn’t possibly have grown and flourished back home.

What had they in common, after all? What except for the fear and lust of two boys, children really.

But as he stood in the doorway of the tiny room Jared shared with their son, two stories above one of the sleaziest bordellos in Hathor, Jensen was rocked to his core. He remembered watching the girls from Club Isis sing and chant, sure that Jared was off to start some wonderful new life.

_“It’s perfect,” he’d said. “It’s like a promise. I can’t wait to marry you.”_

Jensen stood in the doorway, silent, watching as Jared lit candles and said a prayer in his native language, as he kissed his fingers and pressed them to the foreheads of his parents in the picture Jared had clung to during his journeys. How much that picture must have been through. How much Jared had been through as well. Jensen ached for his little fertile, who did indeed appear to be slightly taller than him now. Probably he’d be even taller if starvation hadn’t taken such a toll on him. Jared was gaunt, the billowy silk of his garments practically swallowing him.

He never imagined he’d see Jared alive again, _his_ Jared, his omega. The boy—the man, now—that Jensen had been sure was dead. The man who’d born him a son.

Jensen’s eyes softened with love, as the scent of orange blossoms, the scent of his true mate, tickled his nostrils.

Jensen had never been more confused in all his years. He loved Chase, he was sure of it, but that was a love born of comfort, nourished in the warmth of Chase’s arms as he held Jensen through his nightmares, made sure Jensen took care of himself, made Jensen feel whole again after the trauma of war.

What he felt for Jared couldn’t even be put into words. Not because it was insubstantial, but because it transcended time and space and reason.

He watched as Jared lit the sacred candles atop the small table, whispering softly to the photograph, something that sounded like an apology. Then he began singing, softly, a song that sounded like a lullaby, sad and wistful.

_“You will be who you want to be_

You can choose whatever heaven grants  
As long as you can have your chance  
I swear I'll give my life for you”

For a brief second, Jensen saw his future stretching out before him. He’d have to tell Chase he’d been wrong, he was sorry, so sorry, but he’d found his mate, found Jared again. Chase would understand. They’d only been together for a year or so. It would hurt, yes, but Chase would get over him. Chase was his husband, but Jared was his heart, his home.

Chase would find someone else, someone better, someone to love who’d return Chase’s love twofold. He would understand. He had to.

Jensen belonged with Jared, it could be no other way. _Wherever you are_ , Jensen thought as he stepped into the room. How could he ever have imagined it differently?

Then he saw the flash of silver, and his heart stopped beating in his chest.

“Jared!”

 

He thought he caught a whisper of a smile on Jared’s face, but then Jared was plunging a dagger—Jensen’s dagger— into his chest and crumpling to the floor.

Jared’s soft blue robes turned crimson as Jensen watched in horror.

Jared met Jensen’s eyes in the mirror, and then his paralysis was broken and he bolted across the floor, sliding to his knees and pulling Jared into his arms.

“Gods, Jared, what have you done?” Jensen cried. His hands sought the gleaming weapon buried into Jared’s body, but he knew if he pulled it out Jared would bleed out on the floor before Jensen could even call for help.

“Jensen?” Jared’s eyes fluttered open, and he smiled at Jensen. “Please take care of him, take him out of this place.”

“Jared, no, you’re going to be okay, you have to be okay!”

 “I am okay,” Jared said. “I’ll be home soon, and our son will have... things I could never have given.....” He trailed off and his eyes became unfocused.

Jensen fumbled in his pockets for his com, shouting instructions to a bored sounding operator.

“Jared, please hang on,” Jensen said as he blinked back tears. “We’ll be happy together wherever we are, remember what you said? Even if it’s an asteroid, that’s what you promised!”

“Kiss me?” Jared asked, and Jensen leaned over, pressed his mouth against Jared’s cold lips, desperate to breathe for the two of them.

“Hang on, Jared, please don’t die. I love you, don’t you know that? I love you!”

Jared sighed softly and fell back in Jensen’s arms. “Too,” he murmured. “Love you too.”

A small bubble of blood escaped with Jared’s last breath, staining his lips crimson.

* * *

It was his favorite dream, the one he’s clung to for years, and he smiled when it began to unspool again behind his closed eyes.

_Jory and Jensen and Jared sit in a beautiful park, green trees and blue skies under the cooler sun of Aten. There are no burned-out buildings here, no fields in flames, no desperate cries for help. Nobody sells their bodies on the streets for a few scraps of bread. They buy ice cream from a street vendor and  eat until they feel sick with it, until it’s time to return to their home._

From far away Jared heard Kane shouting, yelling at Sheppard to take the boy downstairs, heard Jensen telling him to hang on. Then his favorite dream began again, and he heard no more.

 

-end-

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/tipsy_kitty/media/ZZZZ02-400_zps6729217a.jpg.html)


End file.
